Winter 2005-06 - Advisers
XXVII, No. 1 - Page 44
Advisers InBrief
© 2005 Student Press Law Center
Magazine adviser restored after being fired for sexual poem
WASHINGTON — Administrators at Shorewood High School
reinstated Steve Kelly for the 2005-06 academic year as adviser of
Imprints, the school’s literary magazine, after he was
asked to resign last year when the publication he oversaw printed a
poem about a sexual experience.
Kelly was asked to resign in June after 17-year-old student Zoya
Raskina published a poem titled "My first fuck" in the
2004-05 edition of the magazine in which the narrator describes being
pressured into a first sexual experience.
After a grievance hearing on Aug. 8, district officials withdrew a
proposed letter of reprimand and restored Kelly as adviser, according
to Donna Lurie of the Washington Education Association, a local
teachers union.
Newspaper adviser gets $74,000 in settlement
INDIANA — Franklin Township Schools will pay former newspaper
adviser Chad Tuley about $74,000 and cover his attorney’s fees
per an out-of-court settlement reached in October.
Tuley, who is on sabbatical leave, will continue to be paid his
regular salary through the end of the school year, when his
resignation takes effect, and will receive an additional $40,000 lump
sum payment after that, according to the settlement. The settlement
also stipulates the school district will pay Tuley’s legal fees
of $23,125.
Tuley agreed never to work for the school district again.
Tuley was removed as adviser of Pilot Flashes and suspended
for a week with pay in November 2004 after the student newspaper
printed an article about a student arrested on murder charges.
He was eventually reassigned to a middle school, which he said he
saw as punishment for allowing publication of the article in
question.
After asking to be reinstated as adviser and being denied, he
filed suit against the school district claming his and his
students’ First Amendment rights had been violated.
Two students win award for pursuing lawsuit
KANSAS — Two former students were presented with the 2005
College Press Freedom Award at the Associated Collegiate Press
convention in October for pursuing a lawsuit to protect the First
Amendment at Kansas State University.
Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center,
said that Katie Lane and Sarah Rice won the award "for their
selfless commitment to their adviser, their university, their student
newspaper and the First Amendment, long after they have any prospect
of personally benefiting from their efforts in this case."
The two former students are appealing a federal court decision
made over the summer in Kansas that said the university’s
decision to fire their adviser based on an "overall content
analysis" did not violate the constitutional rights of the
adviser or the students.
"We’re really concerned about the precedent and setting
the record straight about what administration can and can’t do
with a college newspaper," Lane said. The adviser, Ron Johnson,
has dropped his name from the case.
Johnson, who had been the paper’s adviser for more than 15
years, was told in May 2004 that he was being dismissed. Later he was
told it was because of a lack in overall quality of the student
newspaper.
Paper staff up in arms over adviser’s removal
NEW YORK — On Oct. 7, administrators at Le Moyne College
elected not to renew the contract of a popular student newspaper
adviser.
As a result, The Dolphin’s editorial staff voted 7-0
to halt publication of the newspaper until Alan Fischler is
reinstated, said Dolphin Editor Andrew Brenner.
"We were absolutely livid" about the decision, said
Brenner. He added that the staff will remain loyal to Fischler, who
has been the newspaper’s adviser for eight years.
Shawn Ward, vice president for student development, said the
decision to remove Fischler had nothing to with the newspaper’s
content. He said the newspaper had not printed anything the college
was unhappy with. The decision was based on quality and grammatical
mistakes, Ward said.
But Brenner said Ward told him in a meeting in November that among
other reasons for their decision, administrators were upset with a
weekly satire column in which the columnist sometimes poked fun at
the college.
< Return to Previous Page
