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OHIO — Last month, Wooster City School District officials confiscated the high school student newspaper, The Wooster Blade, because they said an article contained libelous content about two students' alleged misconduct during a house party. Now Blade editors say negotiations have broken down with their principal and superintendent over distribution of the issue, and they are taking steps toward legal action.

Members of the Blade staff and school officials, along with attorneys for both sides, met on Monday afternoon in a closed session in an attempt to reach a resolution over the confiscation. David Millstone, the attorney for the school district, said administrators offered to pay to reprint the Blade if they eliminated any inaccurate and defamatory statements in the article. The Wooster High School students also were given the option to reprint the issue without the article or to shelve the issue entirely and begin work on the next edition.

The five Blade staffers present at the meeting, along with their attorney via phone, balked at the options and said they wanted to distribute the edition and would consider publishing a letter to the editor with the administrators concerns over the article. Blade staffers told a Daily Record reporter that they would not settle unless assurances were given to them that future confiscations would not occur.

"Compromise is not a dirty word," said Darcie Draudt, editor in chief, in a Jan. 7 Daily Record story. "Our main concern is that in the future our [publication] rights are not violated again."

As is, the matter is at a standstill. The Cleveland Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists has provided the students legal representation through Cleveland-based attorney Ken Myers. Myers said he is confident the student journalists have a case because school board bylaws clearly protect the Blade against prior review, prior restraint and censorship beyond the limitations imposed by the 1988 Supreme Court decision in Hazelwood v. Kulhmeier.

"If the newspaper was governed strictly by the types of rules that governed Hazelwood ... [and] even if they had a legitimate beef with one or two lines of one article, confiscating of the entire issue was too extreme to withstand constitutional scrutiny," Myers said. "Given not only the policies that the [school] board has implemented but the fact that it is also considered an open forum newspaper, I don't think they have the right to confiscate it regardless of whether somewhere down the road a court finds something to be defamatory."

In the article in question, Blade staff writers Tim Yaczo and Amila Uppal reported on the school board's decision to lessen the school-imposed punishments for six Wooster student-athletes, who were found to have violated the athletic department code of conduct while attending a house party in November. The Blade reported that the daughter of a school board member was one of the six students to receive the board-imposed community service as punishment. The student also was quoted as saying that she drank alcohol at the party. A 10th-grade student allegedly told the newspaper that he was at the party.

On a direct order from Superintendent David Estrop, Wooster High School Principal Jim Jackson confiscated all 4,500 copies of the Dec. 20 edition of Blade one day before it was to be distributed. Millstone says those copies remain impounded in a "secure location."

Millstone said the administration had the authority to do so because the Blade erred in its reporting. He said the school board member's daughter was not one of the six students disciplined, and she has since denied ever making the statement to the Blade that she drank at the party.

"That is a factual error that can damage an individual," Millstone said. "You are talking about not just a violation of student code but what amounts to criminal conduct. Under the law in Ohio that is called defamation per se."

According to Millstone, Estrop also told Blade adviser Kristi Hiner to obtain releases by the parents of the students named in the story prior to publication because the newspaper was reporting on a confidential student disciplinary hearing.

Hiner, on the advice of her lawyer, would not comment on whether she was given that directive by Estrop. Hiner, who also was present at the Monday meeting, said she allowed her students to do most of the talking.

Millstone said the district had the authority to impound the papers to protect the rights of other students, which is stated in school board bylaws for school-sponsored publications.

Although the newspaper is produced in a classroom setting, the staff and Hiner consider that the Blade is governed by a separate bylaw because printing costs are paid through advertising revenue.

According to the bylaws that govern student publications, the school board "recognizes that an unfettered student press is essential" and that "student journalists shall be afforded protection against prior review and/or censorship" unless the material is obscene, defamatory or causes a material disruption.

Blade Op/Ed Editor Vasanth Ananth said the newspaper did not libel anyone.

"[Administrators] have not found any evidentiary support that [the student's statements were] libelous. They just think it is libelous," Ananth said. And he questioned what authority allowed school officials to review and exercise restraint of the papers before they were distributed.

Myers is expected to file a motion for a temporary restraining order soon to allow the Blade edition to be distributed.

"I think [administrators] have waived their Hazelwood rights or at least assigned them to the adviser who determined these statements were not defamatory," said Myers. "The only reason the school is now claiming the story is defamatory is because the girl who was quoted is now not only recanting her statement but claiming she never made it. The reporter claims she did."

Meanwhile, the climate around the high school remains in support of the students' right to question the confiscation, Hiner said.

"I wholly support my students standing up if they feel their [free-speech] rights have been violated," she said.

Social studies teacher Jolene Dyer echoed that sentiment in a Daily Record article. "Even if it goes no further, a point has been made," she said.

Millstone said the current showdown does not restrict the Blade from publishing future issues. He said administrators are not opposed to articles that criticize them, but the concern remains with accurate reporting.