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Saturday
March 20, 2010 Since 1922 |
Dayton High School paper pulled from shelves
By Keri Mitchell
Baytown Sun Published October 25, 2004 The student editor of The Bronco Beat, Dayton High School’s quarterly newspaper, learned her first big lesson in high school journalism 101 last week: censorship.
Last Friday, 10 days after the newspaper’s first issue of the school year appeared around campus and on the school’s Web site, Principal Laurie Elliot pulled it from the shelves and removed it from the Internet.
Dayton Superintendent Greg Hayman said Elliot did this for one simple reason: she did not see it before it went to print.
“It’s pretty clear cut,” Hayman said. “If she doesn’t have an opportunity to preview it, she will pull it.”
Hayman said he did the same thing a few times when he was principal at Dayton High School and referred to a local board policy that places all school-sponsored publications under administrative control.
Coy Varnon, however, said the paper was pulled for political reasons. An editorial in the first issue asked city officials to take tax money given to the Dayton Community Development Corporation for business start-ups and reallocate it to road repairs, so high school students can shave a half-hour off their drive to school.
Varnon’s daughter is the editor of the school paper.
Varnon said the day Elliot pulled the newspapers, she told the assistant student editor the editorial was “unacceptable.”
The Bronco Beat’s first issue is back on the Web site after a week-long hiatus, but a large blank rectangle looms where the editorial once appeared.
“We don’t think they should be pulling the paper because this is an editorial opinion,” Varnon said. “It’s a little extreme.”
Varnon’s daughter chose not to comment. Elliot did not return phone calls.
Referencing a disclaimer in the newspaper’s masthead, Varnon said opinions expressed in The Bronco Beat “reflect student thinking and do not necessarily represent school faculty or administrators.”
Varnon understands placing limitations on what students can print — he wouldn’t want to see any photos of dead bodies or sexually explicit wording in the school paper — but the editorial does not come close to these extremes, he said.
However, Hayman said administrators have to use a “measuring stick” outlined in the board policy. He specifically referred to a clause that gives administrators power to strike anything that “associates the school with any position other than neutrality on matters of political controversy.”
“As a principal, if you had anything taking issue with any of our civic organizations … I would consider that inappropriate,” Hayman said. “We’re talking about kids here — we’re not talking about adults — and we have policies put in place to try to safeguard them and keep them out of any situation that would deter or take away from their education.”
Unlike the Bronco Beat’s disclaimer, Hayman said he does not view the school newspaper’s editorial stances as separate from the school. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are not the most important issues in high school, he said, because the school district serves a diverse population of students, parents and community members.
“We’re in the business of educating kids, period. We’re not necessarily in the newspaper business,” Hayman said.
High school students do have first amendment rights to a certain extent, said Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center. Before a school official can censor a student publication, he has to show a reasonable, education-based justification, he said.
“That standard is inherently somewhat vague, but a school officer probably can’t censor just because he disagrees with the views that are being expressed by the students or if he thinks those views may be controversial or unpopular,” Goodman said.
Administrators have the right to remove editorials advocating that students engage in something physically disruptive, like a walkout, or material that makes false accusatory statements damaging someone’s reputation, Goodman said. However, criticism in and of itself isn’t libel, he said.
Varnon said a couple of factual mistakes about the Dayton Community Development Corporation were included in the editorial, but that the students were “learning.”
Goodmand said if the inaccuracies were damaging, that could be a legitimate justification for pulling the
newspapers.
The majority of the editorial deals with old and run-down roads, but one paragraph claimed the corporation tried to hide information about the distribution of tax money, which was incorrect, Varnon said. Instead, the corporation at one time refused to comply with an open records request about the distribution of money, he said, claiming the law did not require it to reveal such information.
Despite the paragraph, Varnon still feels like the decision made by Elliot was political. If it wasn’t, he said, the school would have corrected the mistakes in the editorial and put it back on the Web site with the rest of the newspaper.
When incidents like the one at Dayton High occur, Goodman said he encourages students to try to persuade school officials to reconsider their actions or appeal the decision to a higher authority within the school system, such as a superintendent or board members. Sometimes students ask the courts to review an administrator’s censorship.
However, it rarely reaches that point, Goodman said. If the community begins to perceive that information cover-up simply because it reflects negatively on the school, administrators will eventually realize they have a much bigger headache on their hands than students writing a critical story, he said.
“The reality is if they had allowed this to be in print, chances are it would have been read by students and forgotten in a matter of days,” Goodman said. “My guess is that as a result of their censorship, this is going to be brought to the attention of a much larger group of people for a much longer period of time.”
Baytown Sun Published October 25, 2004 The student editor of The Bronco Beat, Dayton High School’s quarterly newspaper, learned her first big lesson in high school journalism 101 last week: censorship.
Last Friday, 10 days after the newspaper’s first issue of the school year appeared around campus and on the school’s Web site, Principal Laurie Elliot pulled it from the shelves and removed it from the Internet.
Dayton Superintendent Greg Hayman said Elliot did this for one simple reason: she did not see it before it went to print.
“It’s pretty clear cut,” Hayman said. “If she doesn’t have an opportunity to preview it, she will pull it.”
Hayman said he did the same thing a few times when he was principal at Dayton High School and referred to a local board policy that places all school-sponsored publications under administrative control.
Coy Varnon, however, said the paper was pulled for political reasons. An editorial in the first issue asked city officials to take tax money given to the Dayton Community Development Corporation for business start-ups and reallocate it to road repairs, so high school students can shave a half-hour off their drive to school.
Varnon’s daughter is the editor of the school paper.
Varnon said the day Elliot pulled the newspapers, she told the assistant student editor the editorial was “unacceptable.”
The Bronco Beat’s first issue is back on the Web site after a week-long hiatus, but a large blank rectangle looms where the editorial once appeared.
“We don’t think they should be pulling the paper because this is an editorial opinion,” Varnon said. “It’s a little extreme.”
Varnon’s daughter chose not to comment. Elliot did not return phone calls.
Referencing a disclaimer in the newspaper’s masthead, Varnon said opinions expressed in The Bronco Beat “reflect student thinking and do not necessarily represent school faculty or administrators.”
Varnon understands placing limitations on what students can print — he wouldn’t want to see any photos of dead bodies or sexually explicit wording in the school paper — but the editorial does not come close to these extremes, he said.
However, Hayman said administrators have to use a “measuring stick” outlined in the board policy. He specifically referred to a clause that gives administrators power to strike anything that “associates the school with any position other than neutrality on matters of political controversy.”
“As a principal, if you had anything taking issue with any of our civic organizations … I would consider that inappropriate,” Hayman said. “We’re talking about kids here — we’re not talking about adults — and we have policies put in place to try to safeguard them and keep them out of any situation that would deter or take away from their education.”
Unlike the Bronco Beat’s disclaimer, Hayman said he does not view the school newspaper’s editorial stances as separate from the school. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are not the most important issues in high school, he said, because the school district serves a diverse population of students, parents and community members.
“We’re in the business of educating kids, period. We’re not necessarily in the newspaper business,” Hayman said.
High school students do have first amendment rights to a certain extent, said Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center. Before a school official can censor a student publication, he has to show a reasonable, education-based justification, he said.
“That standard is inherently somewhat vague, but a school officer probably can’t censor just because he disagrees with the views that are being expressed by the students or if he thinks those views may be controversial or unpopular,” Goodman said.
Administrators have the right to remove editorials advocating that students engage in something physically disruptive, like a walkout, or material that makes false accusatory statements damaging someone’s reputation, Goodman said. However, criticism in and of itself isn’t libel, he said.
Varnon said a couple of factual mistakes about the Dayton Community Development Corporation were included in the editorial, but that the students were “learning.”
Goodmand said if the inaccuracies were damaging, that could be a legitimate justification for pulling the
newspapers.
The majority of the editorial deals with old and run-down roads, but one paragraph claimed the corporation tried to hide information about the distribution of tax money, which was incorrect, Varnon said. Instead, the corporation at one time refused to comply with an open records request about the distribution of money, he said, claiming the law did not require it to reveal such information.
Despite the paragraph, Varnon still feels like the decision made by Elliot was political. If it wasn’t, he said, the school would have corrected the mistakes in the editorial and put it back on the Web site with the rest of the newspaper.
When incidents like the one at Dayton High occur, Goodman said he encourages students to try to persuade school officials to reconsider their actions or appeal the decision to a higher authority within the school system, such as a superintendent or board members. Sometimes students ask the courts to review an administrator’s censorship.
However, it rarely reaches that point, Goodman said. If the community begins to perceive that information cover-up simply because it reflects negatively on the school, administrators will eventually realize they have a much bigger headache on their hands than students writing a critical story, he said.
“The reality is if they had allowed this to be in print, chances are it would have been read by students and forgotten in a matter of days,” Goodman said. “My guess is that as a result of their censorship, this is going to be brought to the attention of a much larger group of people for a much longer period of time.”