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Internet foils high school censors...maybe
ctucker writes "According to this article at MSNBC, students working on school newspapers are using the internet to publish stories that are too uncomfortable for their school administrators to allow to appear in the paper." I'm skeptical of these claims. There's a big difference between being able to put up a webpage which some students might see sometime and being able to publish something in a paper distributed in school. One is not really a direct substitute for the other. Plus I've seen plenty of students get "in trouble" at school for things done entirely on their own time.
From the article:
In the aftermath of the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado, the irreverent and sometimes off-color underground newspapers are haunting reminders of the Web pages created by the student gunmen, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, in which they spewed their anger.
That is why they are a good thing. If school officials had successfully pulled Harris & Klebold's rantings off the Web, it wouldn't have done a thing to prevent what happened later. While those two obviously didn't counsel themselves to sanity, there are plenty of people for whom expression - whether it's art, music, or writing (even Web pages) - has done just that.
Browser? I barely know her!
It's definitely a start for the kids to try to overcome whatever censorship they feel they are going up against. A website is a good place for this.
When I was in high school and the faculty was really restrictive on what we could print, some friends of mine started their own grassroots sort of paper and distribute it around the school, taking it to the local print shop to get 100 copies or so printed. Our school's reasoning was that they wouldn't state mandated funds to print controversial material....
I certainly hope this will work for them, kids need to know that they can be heard too. They have a right to freedom of speech too.
BFD. woohoo. so it's cheaper than going to the copy-shop and making 100 one-side copies of the underground paper. it's not particularly revolutionary as a concept.
one idea, tho--use the cuecat to provide links from the newspaper to the website! hide them in images and whatnot. it'll be cool.
(side-note: you can daisy chain cuecats for the ultimate rave experience (...within 3' of your keyboard port, at least!)
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
I was at a birthday party for a friend of mine, well into the days when Netscape was called Netscape Navigator (still years ago) who actualy said "The Web is the Next Big Underground Thing." We all had a good laugh, and explained to her that you don't get much more above-ground than the internet.
You want an example? My company does the N'Sync website. It's the most popular music site on the internet, period. What do you suppose the average age of our viewers is? I'm guessing it's mostly kids/teens.
So, given that just about every kid has a computer and is on the internet, putting up that kind of information on a website is a reasonable thing to do. I'd personally get tee shirts printed up with the URL and wear them around campus, write the URL on the chalk/whiteboard when I walked into class and the teach was absent, et cetera.
I visit URLs whose content I don't already know all the time. If I see a URL alone on a bumpersticker or something and I remember it, I tend to visit it. Most of the time I just close the window I'm using for it not long after it shows up (with about a 50/50 chance of further porn or ad popups - I want to kill the person at netscape who thought up that onClose() nonsense) and move on with my life, but I do look at them, and I'm guessing the students would, too.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I bet he would have won were it not for all the write in votes for Cthlulhu, Clhuthu and cthuhoola
I fully support this end-run around PR-obsessed and/or corrupt school administrators, but let's not forget that online papers will reach only a limited audience, except in the most affluent of schools. Which is a shame, really, since such schools aren't usually where investigative journalism is most necessary.
That would be in poor urban or rural schools where some very real unsafe conditions exist, conditions only students are likely to encounter, and that aren't likely to be brought to the general public's attention without someone crying foul, and getting noticed. And in such places, that's not going to happen online, if only 3% of the student body (and 2% of the public) has internet access at home.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
My highschool paper had the good fortune to be headed up by an advisor who also was a professional journalist, so whenever the question of "prior review" came up, he told administration where they could stick it. Not many school papers have the benefit of an advisor who realizes that his students have first amendment rights, though - in fact, right after I graduated, he went on sabbatical and was replaced by a nice, compliant, tenured teacher who knew which side her bread was buttered on - she practically fell over herself agreeing that of course the principal should be able to read the paper before it came out, just to make sure there wasn't anything "inappropriate" in there...
I'd love to see the schools try to force removal of an online "underground" paper - the ACLU would be all over it in a second.
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
A similar article appears in the Washington post today, as well:
3 0786-2000Sep18.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A
to accept the praise of personal wisdom is an affront to the very ideal i hold dear.
threat
It's only karma whoring when you actually put an tag in there to make it convenient for people to click on the link.
The problem isn't "those darn kids" v's "Grown-ups", the problem is with people in a position of power making up arbitrary rules simply to advantage them or disadvantage those below. Arbitrary rules are usually poorly defined and easy to work around. Enforcing them becomes a game of whack-the-mole. The problem comes when those in power at a place with a high percentage of unexperienced people go off on a power trip, or overreact to a natural or predictable decision.
- Students: We want to say this
- Teachers: We will stop you
- S: We will say it somewhere else
- T: We will have you arrested and your stuff confiscated
Woah, hold on there. Who's displaying their ignorance now? Children are just proto-adults -- treat them as equals on each issue until they prove themselves to be something else.In my school newspaper I have a column (I know everyone there and they know I can write). In there I was originally allowed to rant about whatever I wanted, as long as I kept it factual and pertanent to school.
After the colombine incident I wrote an article about video game violence (among other topic), but the pricipal nixed it because it was "questionable". I took it in stride because I knew it was. Then I wrote about prayer at football games, another about my views on high school sponsored sports. Both were not allowed to be printed because the maligned the school (in which I didn't choose one school, but schools in general). I then distributed both editorials and another about censorship to every student, but was given 2 days of ISSC for "distributing harmful information". Then when the next edition of the paper came out, instead of my column there was an apology from the principal. Enraged by that I posted all the editorials to a Geocities page (now gone), and had the principal announce it over the PA. I then got two more days for "circumventing the schools decency code".
Sure, I was beat down, and have a few black marks on my school record, but I stuck to my principals. As long as the students keep doing that, there is no way to stop us (short of removing out fingers so we cannot type).
I graduated high school last year, and spent the last few years involved with our publication. The school's in Iowa, one of the few states where student's right to free speech is protected on-campus. (For the full explanation, go to the National Scholastic Press Association or the Student Press Law Center.)
Our journalism teacher is technically the advisor to our publication. He advises us what we legally can and can't do. He shows us where our reporting could be improved, where our writing could be improved, what other angles might catch our readers' interest, make them think, etc. But he doens't have the final say. We can take his advice or ignore it. He treats us more as adults than any other class I've ever taken. And for the most part, we respect his advice...he was a professional reporter for 12 years (and a good one at that), so he knows what he's doing. (When we don't take his advice, we usually regret it. We may be legally protected, but we have readers and they get angry at times...)
This is a much better situation than the states in which students don't have freedom of speech. Those states haven't managed to stamp out student speech, as this article shows, but they have managed to alienate the students from the formal class system and taken away almost any chance of adults reviewing the paper and giving it advice, etc. These websites will very rarely be of the same quality as the paper we produced under our system. We have the freedom of speech and we use it. Our principal definitely respects the paper. She's learned it's better to give us the information we want than leaving us to find it on our own, probably presenting it in a way much less favorable to her. Generally, we work with her to find something agreeable to both students and faculty.
These Blake and Yorktown schools have the right idea, even if their state legislatures do not...you can't really stop the students from posting their opinions, but you can advise them. Believe it or not, students as a whole are pretty reasonable people...if you give them good advice, they'll listen.
If I were to do so, and the school found its content objectionable, what could they do? I'd assume that, provided that no school resources were used to host it, they couldn't actually remove the site. However, could they take action against the students responsible for it? My first thought would be that they, being a private organization, could essentially do whatever they want, though it'd probably look bad for them if they were to retaliate. (would this be different if it were a public school? I'd think it might, but I'm really just guessing there.) Would the situation be different than if I were to print up such a newspaper on paper and hand out copies?
Though I'd prefer to avoid it if possible, I suppose that doing this anonymously might well be the best thing to do. I imagine that a free web hosting account would work for this, but the thought of all the ads that would impose makes me shudder. Are there any better options for something of the sort?
Life is far too important to be taken seriously.
Maybe we should try that on the real deal in November. Cthulhu and *astur in 2000! Why vote for the lesser evil!? A Rolls in every driveway and a tentacle in every home! Woo!
...can't finish this right now. My dick's on fire.
Whereas correcting someone's lame comment, while forgetting to turn off your own +2 posting bonus, is fine.
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
After that, I skipped my senior year, got my GED, and now have a great job at a California startup. Now I just shake my head sadly as I hear about each "new study" or whatever.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
In high school I was an editor (Layout, not grammer, nor reporter). I went to a seminar on the law and school newspaper (accually I wanted a different one, but that one was cancled so I took what I could) According to him, a private school can censor their school sponsered newspaper. A public school cannot, and this lawyer would love to take your case if you go to a public school and the school or principal trys to censor you or your paper in any way. (There are probably limits, but they would be language not content).
Remember americans take the first ammendment more seriously then any other. This works to your advantage, typically you will win any case before you enter a court room. School lawyers know this and will typically settle. The school however is hoping you don't make a legal stink about it, but you should. Most school newspapers are members of a journlism convention (I forget the name) who would love to put you in contact with the right people to help.
When I was in High School, we started an underground newspaper because the local school paper would not allow comics, poetry or stories/articles if you did not work for the paper (or had a friend that did) or if was the slightest bit "risky". Talk about censorship...geesh. And yes, just like every other case, we were threatened with expulsion unless we stopped distribution of our paper.
I'm glad to see students are utilizing their new medium (and with a much bigger audience!)
Don, co-founder of The Daily Llama and Under The Asphalt.
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Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
As far as I'm concerned, these students have every right to do this and the school can't do a damn thing about it. The Civil Liberties union here in MN agrees with me.
Robert Fitzpatrick, a former student of Fergus Falls HS, made and distributed an "Onion" type paper at school. He was given detention for it. He served his detention, and then made several more issues of this paper. The subsequent issues were not distributed on school property but were left at a local Perkins restaraunt for people to pick up. He was given detention every time for excercising his freedom of speech off of school property. He didn't serve the detention because it was BS. The school wouldn't let him graduate. The Civil liberties union got involved and the school finally gave in.
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my school newspaper has certainly had it's issues with printing articles of which the administration did not approve. sometimes we are forced to censor, but generally we have a lot of freedom. we had an article about the school's domestic partners policy which made the P.E. department look like a bunch of right-wing christian radicals and it was printed. however, we are moving to the web this year (for real this time, we had a website last year but it never really took off. however our purpose in publishing online is that it is a whole lot easier and faster. we are lucky to get a regular issue of the newspaper out every four weeks. we plan to update the main articles on the website weekly. this gives us a great deal more ability to be an actual news source, unlike our current situation in which we are mostly a features magazine because of the time issues. by the time we print news no one cares about it. and sports? that's the hardest because we can't print scores for individual games that happened three weeks before. that would be ridiculous. on the web we can because they won't yet be out of date. so i welcome this idea, but for entirely different reasons.
I submit! Out posted...
I went to a high school with ~3700 students. We openly distributed pornography and violent content without fear simply because there were so damn many of us they couldn't possibly keep an eye on everyone.
Also, there is nothing quite as satisfying as walking into the copy room, pretending to be running something off for a teacher, making 1000 copies of a sheet, and walking out with 'seditious content' that they effectively produced for you.
Oh, and it helps when your parents are both 'in system', the principal was undergrad with your father, and you're on all the academic squads. I suppose that gives you immunity as well.
- I settled down long enough to write this and have now collected far too much dust. Damn Dust.
Michael, as a presumed geek, you give the Web a remarkably short stick here.
There's a big difference between being able to put up a webpage which some students might see sometime and being able to publish something in a paper distributed in school.
How so? In fact, high school students today are beginning to outpace college students in their embracement of the Internet.
Think of it this way. You're a modern high school student. I don't care if you're a geek or a trendie. You're given a choice between: the four-page school paper that your boring teachers tell you to read, or the colorful web page that has all the stories they don't want you to read.
It doesn't take long, assuming quite reasonably that the web site is always in the same location, for students to know where to look to find the bits that wouldn't get put in the boring school paper (which is always plastered with articles saying how cool the bastard principal is).
In my high school, a story on teen pregnancy was kept out of the school paper. I went to a private school, which made things worse. Well, it didn't take more than a few dollars worth of nickels to have the objectionable story typed up and copied (luckily this was a small school). I dare say more people had held copies of that story in their hands than the corresponding issue of the school paper. And the fact that it hadn't been put in the school paper for unclear reasons made all the more reason for people to read it.
Plus I've seen plenty of students get "in trouble" at school for things done entirely on their own time.
Yes, well... as with geeks and computer companies, if no one bothers to legally challenge the abuses made against high school students, they are what the abusers want them to be. The whole idle victimization cry is getting a bit stale in both realms. If you assume something is legal (or illegal) simply because a high school principal says it is, then you deserve to live in a place like China. Shi* or get off the pot.
--
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Probably the same thing as what's called simply "ISS" in the school I work at. Couldn't guess at what the C is for, but our ISS stands for In-School Suspension.
The way it works here is this: You arrive at school, and go to the ISS room. You stay in this room until the end of school, 6.5 hours later. Your classwork is delivered to you, and you are expected to complete it. Your lunch is delivered to you. You're only allowed to leave to use the bathroom (or, obviously, for a medical emergency), in which case you are accompanied by a faculty member.
Basically, it's a way of changing suspension from "Hey, cool, I get to sleep in and watch TV" into something that you really, really don't want.
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"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
Oh, and it helps when your parents are both 'in system', the principal was undergrad with your father, and you're on all the academic squads. I suppose that gives you immunity as well.
Do you sleep with your head packed in ice? Thats just as corrupt as the all-american jock who gets to coast through it because he can throw a ball.