It has been the school’s policy for decades to run an obituary or article and photograph of a student or faculty member who passes away. In addition to both elements, Editor-in-Chief Lindsey Sager said the suicide victim’s mother also wrote a letter to be published in the paper thanking her son’s friends, and assuring students that if they needed anything, the family would be there.

Originally Principal Susan Schure was OK with all three elements being included in The Stowhion. Then a few days before they were to go to press, Schure insisted the obituary and photograph be removed from the paper.

Schure did not wish to be quoted for the press. She felt while students may still be vulnerable, publishing the parents’ letter was an effective way to show support for the student and his family.

Adviser Joann Donaldson spoke to Schure to tell her she would be contacting the student’s mother. After Donaldson spoke to the mother about including the letter, she sent an e-mail to the staff at Stow-Munroe asking if they or other students wanted to include anything in the paper about the event. Not more than 30 minutes later, Schure objected.

“Within a half hour, [Schure] had sent out an e-mail that said ‘we are not going to do this’ without consulting me,” Donaldson said. “She said ‘I understand that it’s censorship and I’m OK with that.’”

Sager said in 2005 The Stowhion reported on two suicides that received full pages with no pressure from administrators, and has been acting as a public forum for years, even though Ohio does not have a Student Free Expression Law.

The 1988 ruling in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier held that a high school-sponsored newspaper produced as part of a class and without a “policy or practice” establishing it as a public forum for student expression can be censored only when school officials demonstrate a reasonable educational justification and the censorship is viewpoint neutral.

Adam Goldstein, attorney advocate for the Student Press Law Center said because Ohio is in the sixth circuit, this kind of censorship is unlawful because of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit's 2001 ruling in Kincaid v. Gibson. The case ruled that when a school has both a policy and a practice, the practice is what determines forum status.

“If you’re operating as a forum, you’d have to show that a photograph is illegal to censor it,” Goldstein said. “And even if they weren’t a forum, this censorship doesn’t make sense. I don’t think a school can show it’s part of its educational mission to deny the existence of dead students.”

While Sager said Schure thinks running the obituary and photograph could instigate other students to commit suicide, Sager thinks not running the elements would be discourteous to the student and his family.

“I still feel like if it’s something we did for everyone else, it would be disrespectful to not do it for him,” Sager said. “I don’t understand what would make it OK to not do it for one child.”

Donaldson agrees that what the paper does for one student it must do for the rest. She also thinks obituaries are a regularly occurring part of any publication.

“You don’t open a paper and not see the obit section,” Donaldson said. “No, we haven’t had a death for five years, but I do feel that because we are a publication, something needs to be put in. This has been going on for decades. This is part of our publication.”

By Joanna Brenner, SPLC staff writer