Ruling Allows High School Paper to Poll Students on Sex and AIDS

Although school administrators object, journalism students at Foothill High School in the Tustin Unified district may poll their classmates on teen-age sex habits and knowledge about AIDS, an Orange County Superior Court commissioner ruled Wednesday.

Under the temporary restraining order by Commissioner Eleanor M. Palk, the students may distribute their “Health Issues Survey” during lunch hour, as well as before and after school, despite contentions by administrators that the questions about sex could “violate the rights” of the students being polled.

A hearing was set for May 19 in the suit against the Tustin Unified School District. The suit was filed Wednesday in Superior Court by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of one of Foothill High’s journalism students.

Questions About Sex

The poll, composed by editors of the Knightlife, Foothill High’s newspaper, queries students about the value of the school’s health courses and their understanding of the transmission of acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

It also asks students questions such as “Are you sexually active?” and “What, in your opinion, is the percentage of students at Foothill who are sexually active?”

Administrators said they worry that newspaper distribution of the surveys would give those questions an official imprimatur.

“We’re not in the censorship business, but as far as I’m concerned, the questions were inappropriate,” said Maurice A. Ross, superintendent of the school district. “To ask the 14-year-old girls if they have had sex, and if so, why--well, we don’t like to get into that.”

Policy Seen

But Knightlife editors said the administration decision to block the survey is part of a policy to keep controversial subjects out of the paper. Administrators “like to say, ‘Foothill students don’t have sex, Foothill students don’t do drugs,’ but all of these things do happen here,” said Knightlife Editor-in-Chief Tina Araujo, 17.

“People have to be aware of what’s really out there, not just what they’d like to be out there,” she said.

Araujo said that after the paper ran a Feb. 12 story critical of his policy requiring students to say the Pledge of Allegiance each week, Principal James A. Ryan ordered that all articles be cleared by his office before publication.

Only minor changes had been required before administrators decided to block the poll, said Araujo, a senior who will be attending Scripps College in the fall.

Ryan could not be reached for comment.

The suit was filed in Santa Ana by the ACLU on behalf of Sean Flynn, 17, a Knightlife editorial page editor.

Flynn, who will attend Pitzer College in the fall, described the controversial stories on the flag salute and the sex survey as “definitely a circulation ploy” for the Knightlife, which is published three times a month and distributed for free.

“We’ve had many complaints through the years that our newspaper is boring, so now we’re trying to do the same things that a real newspaper does by covering the most relevant stories that exist,” Flynn said.

Ross disagreed.

“There have been some articles in there that some parents would question, but we try to give them their freedom of speech,” he said.

The temporary restraining order does not bar administrators from blocking publication of the survey’s results. And Ross would not say if Knightlife staff members would be permitted to write about the survey.

“If they come back with an article on the survey, then we’ll have to deal with it at that time,” Ross said.

Araujo said she would publish the survey’s results even under threat of suspension.

“To me, what’s at stake is freedom of the press for the high schools,” she said.

While Tustin Unified school officials were trying to stop circulation of a sex habits survey in their district, the Santa Monica-Malibu Board of Education was asking students to complete such a questionnaire.

Last week, the Santa Monica school board voted to circulate a survey among high school students asking questions ranging from how many cigarettes a student smokes a day to how many times the student has had sexual intercourse.

Parental permission is required to participate in the Santa Monica survey.

The Tustin dispute comes after recent court decisions strengthened the authority of school administrators over student newspapers.