District Quits Fight Over AIDS Editorial

Rather than face more controversy and expense, Huntington Beach Union High School District officials said Friday they are dropping efforts to prevent publication of an editorial about AIDS written by a Westminster High School student editor.

Moreover, the district said it will pay student Michael Shindler’s legal costs in battling for his editorial--a total of $14,088--and will prevent the high school from dropping him as editor.

The district said, however, that in reaching an agreement with Shindler it does not concede that it has made any error.

“The district still feels that teachers have a right to demand certain journalistic standards of the students who submit articles,” said Catherine McGough, administrative assistant to the superintendent of the district.

“The controversy and the expense that surrounded this situation, however, had approached an unreasonable level.”

Editorial for Paper

The issue centered on an editorial that Shindler, 17, of Westminster, wrote last fall for the Scroll, the student newspaper at Westminster High. The editorial criticized public misconceptions about acquired immune deficiency syndrome and accused the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) of spreading misinformation about the disease and about homosexuals.

According to a lawsuit later filed in Shindler’s behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union, Shindler’s journalism adviser and Westminster High Principal Robert Boehme disapproved of the editorial in late October. The lawsuit said that Boehme told Shindler the article was too political and might be libelous.

In early December, Orange County Superior Court Judge Judith Ryan ordered Westminster High to allow publication of the editorial. The district, however, announced it would appeal the ruling. The agreement reached Friday means that the school district will drop its legal appeal and allow the editorial to be published.

Shindler and his ACLU lawyer, Susan Borges of Cypress, said Friday that they are pleased by the district’s decision.

“I feel the district has finally found their senses, which probably were under a damp, dark rock,” Shindler said in a telephone interview from his home. “I hope this is a message to the principal and the superintendent of the district that they are not above the Constitution.”

Remains as Editor

Shindler said his high school journalism adviser earlier in the school year had appointed him editor for the entire school year but that after the controversy over Shindler’s editorial erupted had said that journalism students would elect an editor--presumably a new editor. The agreement, however, now says that “Shindler is to remain editor-in-chief of the school paper during the remainder of the school year unless there is good cause for changing his position.”

Shindler said he had been falsely accused of not researching the editorial sufficiently. Both he and his attorney, Borges, said there is nothing libelous in the editorial.

Borges said the ACLU will be reimbursed money it advanced for filing fees and other costs, a total of about $150. She said she had paid the other costs and overhead of the case and that she would therefore get the bulk of the settlement money--about $13,950.

Shindler, a senior at Westminster High, said that after graduation he plans to attend Golden West College in Huntington Beach and then transfer to UC Irvine “where I want to major in psychology.”

He added: “I want to be a hypnotherapist and ultimately go into politics.”