Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, the landmark Supreme Court case that back in 1988 showed the nation’s high school administrators a way to rein in frisky student editors, began with a principal pulling a story about teen pregnancy. The topic’s an evergreen: just last month, Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire made headlines when administrators rejected stories on teen pregnancy, teen drinking, and shoplifting. I haven’t seen the stories, but Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Virginia, has. “It’s rock-solid work,” he says. “The stories are very balanced and if anything, they’re on the tame side. The story about teen pregnancy in particular could have been written by Bristol Palin with Sarah Palin’s approval. It’s the story of a teenage girl who becomes pregnant by her high school boyfriend and does what I think everybody in society considers the admirable thing. She keeps the baby and marries the father.”
Hall’s past president of the Journalism Education Association, and from 1973 to 1999 he was the journalism program’s faculty adviser at my alma mater, Kirkwood High School, a public school in suburban Saint Louis. With some delight he recalled the year when so-called open parties, hosted by kids whose parents were out of town, become so notorious the local police chief and superintendent of schools joined in an appeal to parents to do something about it. Of course the school paper covered the story—and so did the yearbook.
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One of the biggest of the consulting firms is NEOLA, originally the Northeast Ohio Learning Association, which now services close to 1,000 school districts in seven states, including Illinois. NEOLA warrants its legal advice: follow its “templates” and if you’re sued NEOLA will back you up in court.
The attorneys review the case law: Hazelwood established that schools can exercise firm control in a “nonpublic forum as long as those actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns.” But vigilance is necessary if nonpublic status is to be maintained. The school paper must be produced as part of the curriculum. The adviser must be on the faculty; the students must receive grades and academic credit. The adviser or principal must review each issue before publication.
Bowen told me most school administrators chose one of the first two options. (NEOLA director of legal research Amanda Clapp, daughter of Richard, tells me it’s too soon to say.) But there are two others, called “limited public forum—light” and “limited public forum—almost open.” To different degrees, both offer administrators the freedom of skipping prior review and limit their legal liability (it’s the kids’ paper, not the school’s) while opening the students’ work to a “broader range of competitions” (it’s neat to win prizes). The disadvantages? Lack of control, obviously. Students “may not act responsibly”—here a lawyer interjects, “That’s the definition of a teenager as far as I’m concerned”—yet escape punishment. And backlash from the community and special interest groups could get really grim: “Students, staff, Board members may be targeted.”
