Alternative Paper Prints Offending Sentence : Censored Student Journalists Go Underground

Evergreen High School students, involved in a dispute with their principal over charges of censorship, Wednesday handed out a three-page underground newspaper that they said tells the real story of the controversy.

Standing outside the Sylmar campus, newspaper staff members handed their classmates copies of the publication containing a sentence that Principal Robert Beck deleted from the school newspaper, Off the Press.

The students also announced that they will hold a press conference today to air grievances against Beck and to distribute the second edition of the alternative newspaper they call Off the Press Goes Off the Record.

The Evergreen incident has gained attention in the wake of last week’s Supreme Court decision that restricted the protection high school journalists may claim under the First Amendment.

Censorship Permitted

In a 5-3 vote, the high court ruled that a Hazelwood, Mo. principal did not violate students’ rights to free speech by deleting from a student newspaper articles on teen-age pregnancy and the impact of divorce.

Los Angeles Unified School District policy permits school administrators to censor school publications if the material is libelous, obscene or contains profanity.

Evergreen students liken their situation to the case that was before the Supreme Court. Before publication of the newspaper’s October edition, a sentence was deleted from an article on censorship. Although the sentence did not contain any obscene four-letter words, it was sexually suggestive and Beck found it offensive.

Soon after Beck’s action, the student journalists were angered again when the principal of nearby Sylmar High School denied an Evergreen request to conduct a survey of that school’s student body.

The survey sought information on a variety of subjects from curfew times to attitudes on nuclear war and sexual activity. Evergreen reporter Shaun Cartwright, who had permission to conduct the survey at her own school, said she wanted to poll students at Sylmar because of its larger enrollment.

“We get so many requests to poll our students that it gets in the way of our other business,” said Sylmar Principal Ernest Scarcelli. “I wasn’t trying to censor any newspaper, but I’ve got enough to worry about without an opinion poll conducted by a group of non-students.”

Students Upset

The Evergreen journalists said they again were upset when Beck turned down a request to use the school photocopying equipment to duplicate the story, complete with the deleted sentence.

After Beck’s refusal, the students decided to publish their own newspaper with their own interpretation of events.

“The way we are being treated makes us feel like second-class citizens,” the students stated in their editorial.

Although his decision drew the campus, a small alternative school for students with disciplinary problems, into controversy, Beck said that, if he had to do it over again, he would delete the sentence.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that I would do the same thing,” Beck said. “I think, all in all, this has been a positive experience for the students. They have learned that, along with the right to publish goes the responsibility of answering to someone. In the real world, you have to answer to the editor. In high school, you have to answer to the principal.”