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High school principal halts distribution of newspaper
Front page featured stories on teenage sexual activity, teen parents
January 19, 2007
Kristi Piper, journalism teacher and
faculty advisor for The Panther Press, said the seven students on the
paper’s staff learned of the school’s reasoning last week from an
administrator.
“I was told that the material was not age
appropriate and the campus principal hadn’t reviewed it prior to
publication,” Piper said.
Two front-page articles about Danbury
High School students with children and another article that focused on sexually
transmitted diseases ignited the controversy, Piper said.
“[Teenage
pregnancy is] one of the main issues that is going on not only in our community,
but our world,” said Kennon McKinney, editor in chief of The Panther
Press. “A lot of students are choosing to have sex earlier than back
when our teachers were students, so we just knew they needed to hear about the
consequences of their actions.”
Danbury administrators said school
district officials objected to some of the content, believing it did not reflect
the values of taxpayers, according to the Brazosport Facts, a newspaper
in nearby Clute, Texas.
“That in a nutshell is what we do in
publications like this or situations like this, guided by that principle and
that light and helping youngsters learn about journalism and learning about that
whole process of forming a newspaper,” Superintendent Eric Grimmett said
in an interview with the Facts. Grimmett could not be reached for comment
by the SPLC.
Katie Stephen, a junior who wrote a story about sexually
transmitted diseases, said censoring the paper “was offending and
rude” toward those students.
“Students do these kind of things,” she said. “Not
everybody, but they do.”
Grimmett told the Facts that the
newspaper was not reviewed before it was published, which caused administrators
to restrict its distribution.
“Our district policy was not
followed, which requires prior review before publication,” he told the
Facts.
Piper said this was the first time she has experienced any
prior review or censorship at the school. She said she questions the
district’s reasoning in not distributing the paper after reviewing its
policies.
“It said the administration is responsible for all
student publications, but does not call for prior review,” she
said.
McKinney said The Panther Press will write an editorial that
criticizes the decision in the next issue of the paper, but doubts it will be
published.
“The way our principal is, it probably won’t end up
getting in there,” he said.
© 2007 Student Press Law Center
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