High School Papers Say Ruling Is Bad News

The mood was frenetic and excited Thursday afternoon at the offices of the Accolade, the student newspaper of Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, as editors and reporters scrapped the front page and threw together a new one. The new banner headline: Supreme Court Permits Censorship.

Reporter Grace Choy feverishly labored over her video display terminal on what would be the lead story for the biweekly paper, a story with national scope that also struck at the heart of every high school newspaper operation in the country. This was perhaps the biggest story of her young journalistic career. She didn’t have time to be interviewed.

After the 16-year-old journalist had heard the news on the radio Wednesday, she picked up an afternoon edition of a local newspaper and began writing. She stayed at the Accolade until 9 p.m. and finally wrapped up her first draft at home around midnight. Thursday morning, she interviewed the school principal. Then, working with the morning editions of several daily newspapers, Choy and her editor, Jennifer Moulton, 17, and a dozen other Accolade staff members bustled around the chaotic newsroom, trying to make their 2:30 p.m. deadline.

“I think it’s really wrong to put age limits on freedom of speech, censorship, all that,” Moulton said above the din about Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling that public school officials have the right to censor school newspapers.

“Everyone was really upset,” she said.

Throughout Orange County on Thursday, high school journalists, principals and newspaper advisers were discussing the impact of the high court decision, which was based on a Missouri case in which high school students sued their principal for deleting from a school newspaper articles on teen-age pregnancy and the impact of divorce.

In voting 5 to 3, the justices said the students had no legal right to publish the controversial articles because the paper was owned and controlled by the school. College newspapers, however, are not affected by the ruling.

Coincidentally, the Accolade is running a center spread on students’ reaction to divorce in this next issue, which comes out today, Moulton said.

In the offices of the Trident, Corona del Mar High School’s student newspaper, there was plenty of indignation Thursday over the high court ruling.

“Personally, I’m really disturbed by it,” said Kathryn Nelson, editor of the Trident, which will carry a report on the high court’s decision in its Jan. 22 edition.

“I feel very strongly that this is taking away the constitutional rights of the students. . . . You know, we’re citizens of the United States--18-year-olds can be drafted and die for their country, but we still can’t publish stories about divorce in the (student) newspaper, Nelson said. “That’s controversial? It’s an average fact of life. I myself have divorced parents.”

Nelson said the Trident serves as a forum for information and stories on subjects including bulimia. When written by other students, she said, the articles may have greater impact than if the students are “told by some counselor that’s twice (the student’s) age what to do.”

Among stories published in Corona del Mar High’s biweekly newspaper was one about birth control, called “The Year of Loving Dangerously,” Nelson said.

Despite their concerns with the issues of free speech and first amendment rights, both Moulton of Sunny Hills High and Nelson of Corona del Mar High said they are confident their newspapers will continue to publish stories whether they are controversial or not. That is because their principals have shown respect for the value and rights of student journalists and have afforded the campus journalists a wide berth, they said.

Sunny Hills High’s principal, Gary Mieger, when interviewed by Choy for her story, said he has been very happy with the Accolade and its adviser, Carol Hallenbeck. Mieger added that he believes that the students have handled sensitive issues “quite well.”

The Accolade has published stories on AIDS, herpes, birth control, runaways, as well as an editorial listing the pros and cons of abortion, said Nathan Winn, the 17-year-old news editor of the Accolade.

Corona del Mar’s Trident has covered the switch of principals between that school and Newport Harbor High School in what faculty adviser Linda Mook called “a very balanced, well-reported spread in this last issue.”

Mook, also the president of the California Journalism Education Assn., a 200-member group of junior high and high school newspaper advisers, said the censorship ruling potentially denies students the promises made to them in the Bill of Rights. “It would be an outrage if we turned into a public relations vehicle for insecure administrators on campus,” she said.

But Mook said Corona del Mar High’s principal, Dennis Evans, never has asked to review stories or withhold anything from the Trident. And he made an interesting point, Mook said, in discussing the high court’s censorship ruling with her after it was announced Wednesday.

“He said to me that high school principals shouldn’t be overjoyed with this decision because now there can be community pressure (brought) upon the principal: ‘We want the paper to say this, we think this is reasonable, don’t let those kids say that.’ He said, ‘Before this, I always told (community members or parents) that I’m upholding the laws that grant the rights of student expression.’

“It’s going to be tougher politically for principals now.”

Patrick Yoon, the 16-year-old news editor of the Trident, said he believes the ruling was made on faulty grounds, “because one of the factors in the decision is that the school is essentially fulfilling the role of publishers. I don’t agree with that.

“If we considered the state to be the publisher, it is in essence like having a state-controlled press, which is unconstitutional,” Yoon said.

Yet it was the implication of the high court decision for the students themselves that seemed troubling to many.

“It’s like we have no constitutional rights--(that) we are not in the real world, teen-agers don’t have problems, we don’t exist until we’re 18,” Trident editor Nelson said. “That’s not true. We have problems and feelings, too, and we need the opportunity to have a forum free of censorship.”

The high school senior added dryly, “Now, I can understand if you had an editor who was a freshman. . . .”