Freedom to Be Vulgar?

Fresh debate over students’ rights to freedom of speech was touched off on the Westside last month with the widely publicized suspension and transfer of several Palisades High School students for producing a crude underground newspaper. School officials banned the newspaper from the school, partly because it contained vulgar, sexually explicit language in describing teachers unpopular with the writers, including one story that falsely portrayed a teacher as having acted in pornographic films.

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GREG STRAUSBERG

17, Palisades High senior; suspended for distributing underground paper; transferred to Venice High School

The paper may have been wrong--it was horrible--but it did bring up a bunch of changes. Students’ rights are now being discussed because of [the publicity surrounding the newspaper’s censorship].

The forum for [student views, particularly teachers evaluations] has always been out there, but no one has ever taken it seriously. So the premise of the paper was right; we had a lot to say and no one was taking us seriously until now. Maybe [the writers] didn’t go about it in the right way, but that’s what they needed to do to get everyone’s attention.

I realize that the newspaper had some very malicious and cruel things in it, which I thought would be funny and just a joke.

But it’s just crazy how big this whole thing’s gotten.

[School officials] haven’t even given me a chance to apologize to any of the teachers, because I can’t go back to school. I should have just been suspended for a day or two days or had to issue a student apology or do community service, like helping the teachers that were insulted.

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TERRY FRANCKE

General counsel, California 1st Amendment Coalition, Sacramento

Students at virtually every level of school--public or private--may bring action in support of their 1st Amendment rights. In the case of an underground paper, students’ rights are [particularly] protected.

If this were an official campus newspaper, then the journalism students could be flunked for using poor judgment--although there could even be a fight over that. But this is not a case where the publication is an official [campus publication], but purely the speech of the students themselves. [Therefore, it] cannot be flatly censored or banned from being distributed.

Under California law, everything that I have seen suggests that the school has no power to punish these students, [even though that the paper contains certainly] vulgar and possibly also defamatory statements. The one area that there is some ambiguity is in libel. Because if you say that someone is a prostitute or unchaste, and it is false, that is libel per se--unless it is clear from the context that the statements have been made in a satirical manner. While there are jokes that fall very flat, the issue is not whether they’re funny or tasteless. The question is rather, would most people take the content or tone seriously, or as [it was intended], a joke.

MARK ADAMS

Husband of Janis Adams, one of the teachers who was attacked in the underground newspaper

My wife, Janis, and I came of age during the 1960s and 1970s and are both very supportive of freedom-of-speech rights. But what’s happening at Palisades High School has nothing to do with what people fought for in the 1960s and 1970s.

They made an implicit threat [by] bringing my 8-year-old son into an issue, and threatened to publish the [home] addresses of every teacher at the school. They are invading the privacy of every teacher and every spouse of every teacher, and there’s no way that’s protected by freedom of speech.

They have no right to defame people. This is so far removed from a 1st Amendment controversy [with] kids making threats and degrading women.

I don’t know how to make the point [of the extent of damage done by the students] without quoting the language that they used; but it’s so disgusting, so wrong and so offensive that nobody wants to quote it [verbatim in the media].

Nobody is objecting to an underground newspaper. I can remember being on the other side of this issue and had opinions on my own teachers in student evaluations. But what was said about Janis had nothing to do with her teaching ability. I’m pleased that the school district has acted and is doing its job of protecting its teachers.