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Pirate Press Editor-in-Chief Emily Voss said she walked through the school confiscating copies of the issue that had been distributed to students Oct. 2, as mandated by Boonville High School Principal Jay Webster, who acted on orders from Superintendent Mark Ficken. A few hours later in the same day, Voss re-distributed the papers to students after Ficken reversed his decision. However, Ficken still refused to allow the paper to be distributed as an insert with the Boonville Daily News, as it is every month.

Voss said Ficken withheld the issue because of a few articles he found controversial, particularly a features article titled "Far From Straight" that described students' responses to tolerance toward gay people.

"A student quote dealt with young people that live an alternative lifestyle ... and the student's quote said that homosexuals were freaks," Ficken said. "That could be really disruptive to the educational process."

Voss said she and other editors specifically chose to highlight the feelings of Boonville High School student Kylie Melkersmen whose brother recently came out to his family. Voss said they chose Melkersmen because her brother is no longer a high school student and the staff wanted to avoid putting current Boonville students under the spotlight.

Voss said she and her staff tried to make sure the article was well balanced, with opinions from multiple people.

"We try not to interview people on staff," Voss said, "and there aren't many people in our school who are out, so we had to take a different approach. [Melkersmen's brother] had just recently come out, so we wanted to interview [his sister] about how the family is handling it."

Ficken said that front-page articles that covered school buses and cafeteria lunches also motivated his decision to withhold the paper. He said he didn't like the use of the word "sucks" in describing school lunches because it belittled hard-working cafeteria employees. He felt the other article included misleading language that inaccurately raised questions about transportation safety.

"It spoke of buses being overcrowded, which would present a safety hazard on behalf of the district," Ficken said. "It could have been more accurate in saying that the buses seemed to be more crowded ... but overcrowded implies that they are not safe."

Voss said the issue was approved be her adviser, Stephanie Carey, and sent to the printer Wednesday night. On Thursday morning, Carey suggested that Voss give a copy to the principal, so he could preview the content. The principal also approved the issue, according to Voss.

Though Ficken reversed his decision to withhold copies from students, he was still uncomfortable with surrounding community members reading the articles, said Voss.