‘Offensive’ Items Excised From Student Magazine : Journalism: Redondo Union High School officials restricted entries in a literary publication they thought were offensive. Irate students are charging censorship.
Amid charges of censorship, students at Redondo Union High School went to press last week with a student literary magazine in which more than a half dozen allegedly offensive artworks, poems and stories had been altered or excised at the behest of school officials.
Scott Powell, the 18-year-old editor of the student publication Opus, said the changes were forced on staffers after a teacher who was not involved with the magazine seized the galleys 2 1/2 weeks ago and complained to the principal that some submissions were sacrilegious and obscene.
Among the items the teacher found objectionable, Powell said, were a poem by an honor student titled “(expletive) Authority” and a drawing of a demon swallowing a crucifix on which the face of Christ was a Happy Face logo.
“The material that was presented to me was very obscene,” said Principal Jack Clement, who added that he responded by convening a five-member committee of faculty and administration “to review the literary merit” of the publication.
“As a school official, I feel I have a responsibility to make sure the image our school projects reflects our various audiences,” he said. “Yes, there ought to be freedom of expression. I firmly believe in the 1st Amendment. But we serve several different audiences, not only in our school but in our community, and our charge is to bring out the best in our students in terms of their writing and talent.”
But students disagreed, as did the magazine’s faculty adviser, David Lemire, who, like Clement, sat on the committee.
“Many of the things (Clement) wanted edited were so insignificant,” said Lemire, an English teacher who has been volunteer adviser to the magazine for three years.
Lemire noted, too, that this is Clement’s first year with the district.
“I think he just wanted to avoid any potential phone call from any potential parent of any potential frame of mind,” Lemire said.
Lemire said that even though the author of the poem had already agreed to change its title and the magazine staff volunteered to excise the sketch, Clement alerted the committee to dozens of submissions that he felt should be censored, ranging from a sketch of a serpent entwined around a crucifix to the use of such words as rape. Most of Clement’s suggestions--including those two examples--were overruled by the committee, Lemire and Clement agreed.
But, Lemire added, the principal exercised veto power over the committee in some cases, insisting that all profanity involving the word god be removed from the students’ short stories and poems.
Clement denied that he had used veto power over the committee.
“It was an open, collaborative effort, and . . . we walked away feeling that we had enhanced the quality of the product,” Clement said.
Lemire said he and Powell plan to take the matter before the South Bay Union High School District trustees at their next meeting. Moreover, he said, he has consulted the American Civil Liberties Union about his concerns, along with the Washington-based People for the American Way, a national First Amendment rights watchdog organization. Ironically, People for the American Way recently lauded Redondo Beach’s elementary trustees for withstanding efforts by a local Christian parents’ group to censor the grade-school reading curricula.
School Supt. Walter Hale defended Clement’s actions.
“What is commonly misunderstood by youngsters is that they have rights, but they also have responsibilities to maintain professional standards of language and journalism, and from what I understand, those standards were not upheld,” Hale said. “The school has some rights, too, about what it’s going to publish.”
Students, meanwhile, remained incensed about the controversy, which has spawned a line of anti-censorship buttons and reams of flyers protesting Clement’s actions.
