Comments on: Freedom of the Student Press

By: JagWire Oral Sex Story Continues « The Doc Is In

JagWire Oral Sex Story Continues « The Doc Is In — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 03:11:44 +0000

[...] the lawsuit are asking for $800,000 to $1.5 million each. This has caused the district to react in a manner inconsistent with First Amendment rights. However, the suing students’ integrity has been called into question: In an earlier letter [...]

By: drpezz

drpezz — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 06:43:50 +0000

Your scenario of a meeting would imply there’s some give and take. There isn’t.

By: Dan Ray

Dan Ray — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:09:21 +0000

Censorship, I suppose, is the imposition of limitation for a specific purpose. Why have a review? To what end? “Censorship” and “review” seem, at least to me, qualitatively different. “Review” is what editors do all the time. Is it censorship or merely circumspection? Why not have the students interview the “censors” in order to get their perspective on the matter?

By: drpezz

drpezz — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:30:05 +0000

I think you are helping to prove my point because you are the adviser, the one in charge. Decisions such as these should not fall to outside, untrained personnel. I know we have built a strong program (Pacemakers are frequent here), but we have also done this by being very careful about which students to choose for leadership positions and for reporter jobs.

It took ten years to build our program, and we would fight tooth and nail to maintain its integrity and autonomy.

By: Clix

Clix — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:56:37 +0000

Um.

Year before last, I had a student do that. In the YEARBOOK, no less. Changed something after I’d given the page the final okay, but before it was uploaded – I had other pages to look at, and I have to upload from home since our district won’t (or wouldn’t – I’m gonna lobby again this year since I’m having some trouble getting things uploaded) let me upload from the school computers. And I don’t have InDesign at home. SO.

And that was only my second year teaching. I’m lucky I kept my job. (Though I think that might’ve been because nobody wanted it!)

I tell the students that the only truly free press is one they produce and distribute completely on their own. I can’t imagine that any successful, award winning, recognized student newspaper allows any students to join and publish whatever they want, because honestly? A lot of “whatever they want” is fluff, crap, or both.

Yesterday my wonderful gremlins bypassed writing about school sports, community service projects, Red Ribbon Week, the UNICEF fund drive, and other newsy articles because they would rather do “Our Favorite Holiday Songs” and “Our Favorite Places to Shop” and “Our Holiday Wish Lists” and “Our Favorite Holiday Movies” and “The History of Holidays” (What Do You Mean I Can’t Copy Wikipedia?)

At what point does it go from being common sense (really, we DO need to cover the UNICEF drive, which was a student sponsored, student-run event!) to censorship (no, we CANNOT list “your mom’s bed” as one of the “Favorite Vacation Spots!!”)?

To me, BOTH of those are common sense, and if the student isn’t going to exercise it, then it falls to the adults.