Officials denounce proposal to muzzle student newspapers

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Officials denounce proposal to muzzle student newspapers

Saturday, December 01, 2001

By Jane Elizabeth, Post-Gazette Education Writer

Some school newspaper sponsors and staffers are seething over quietly proposed changes to the state school code that could put new limits on what student newspapers can publish.

Proposed guidelines "Public school students may express themselves unless the expression materially and substantially interferes with the educational process; threatens harm to the health, safety or welfare of the school, students, faculty, or community; is vulgar, lewd, obscene or plainly offensive; encourages unlawful activity; or interferes with another individual's rights." ...
"School officials may require students to submit for prior approval a copy of materials to be displayed, posted, distributed or otherwise disseminated on school property."
Current provisions of the school code relating to student freedom of expression can be found at: www.pnpa.com/pspa
/pspa/paschoolcode.htm

George Taylor, executive director of the Pennsylvania School Press Association, has rallied a coalition to oppose the changes. The association is meeting this weekend in Harrisburg and will discuss the revisions to Chapter 12, which Taylor said "would virtually eliminate the limited ... First Amendment rights Pennsylvania student journalists have."

The changes also would mean that Pennsylvania would no longer be the only state in the mid-Atlantic region that has a statute protecting student free expression, said Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va.

The new regulations would trim the current language -- about two dozen paragraphs -- to four paragraphs of broad guidelines.

And in this case, Goodman said, less is not more.

"It's very cagey," he said. "The impact is a dramatic reduction in freedom for student newspapers."

For example, the current regulations prevent students from publishing material that "threatens immediate harm to the welfare of the school or community."

The new language omits the word "immediate" -- which Goodman believes could allow administrators to object to articles or pictures indefinitely.

The changes also add a prohibition against material that "is vulgar, lewd, obscene or plainly offensive."

"This leaves a lot of room for interpretation," said Kara D. Beem, an attorney with the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association. "How do you know what is vulgar or lewd? What if students wrote about a sex education course? Is that plainly offensive?"

These paragraphs also would be removed from the new regulations:

"Students have a right and are as free as editors of other newspapers to report the news and to editorialize within the [previously stated] provisions."

"School officials may not censor or restrict material simply because it is critical of the school or its administration."

Goodman said eliminating those phrases would give some school officials justification to censor anything they define as criticism of the school.

Even under the current guidelines, articles on artificial vs. natural turf and the lack of doors on bathroom stalls have been censored by area school principals, said Helen Fallon, chairman of the journalism and mass communications department at Point Park College.

And the proposed changes would give the principals more censorship power, she said. "School newspapers would not be public forums anymore," said Fallon, whose department holds training courses for high school journalism teachers and sponsors a high school newspaper competition. "And that frightens me. How can we expect students to become critical thinkers? It's a disservice."

But censorship isn't what state officials have in mind, insisted Peter Garland, executive director of the state Board of Education. The regulations needed to be streamlined, he said, to allow local school officials more room to make their own decisions about what's appropriate content for their student publications.

Garland said critics of the changes would have an opportunity to comment, because the changes were unlikely to be ready for adoption until the 2003-04 school year. He said the board's attorneys should complete the proposal by January.