\n<\/p>\n
High school journalism is often seen as a gentle apprenticeship: a place where teenagers cut their teeth on post-game reports from Friday night football or incremental updates of a student-council race. But at 17, Myesha Phukan wanted to work on something meatier. As a student reporter for the Oracle at Mountain View high school, she and a group of student journalists began methodically digging into a pattern of on-campus sexual harassment that, the reporters believed, administrators weren\u2019t handling effectively. Over weeks of rigorous investigation, the Oracle amassed a substantial archive of evidence including screenshots, photos and witness accounts. The story investigated alleged on-campus offenders and consulted experts about the need for accountability when it comes to on-campus assault.<\/p>\n
When Phukan and her fellow reporters asked the school\u2019s principal for comment about the administration\u2019s perceived inaction, tensions escalated. In several closed-door meetings, Phukan says she was warned that such an article could have \u201ccatastrophic\u201d reputational repercussions, for the alleged offenders and the school. The original draft included descriptions of serious offenses, ranging from harassment, to attempted rape.<\/p>\n
double quotation markOftentimes people think of censorship as physically pulling a story from a paper. But it can come in the form of funding cutsMyesha Phukan<\/p>\n
According to Phukan, the administration stated their belief that the Oracle\u2019s reporters should be concerned with casting the school in a \u201cpositive light\u201d. The reporters on the paper felt immense pressure to revise the story, which eventually they did. The name of an alleged repeat harasser was removed (with the administration citing fears of jeopardizing that student\u2019s mental health) and critical details about on-campus assaults were also removed. Detailed accounts were replaced with more vague descriptions and quotes from female students and expert sources were pared back. \u201cWe significantly self-censored and watered it down,\u201d Phukan says.<\/p>\n
Despite these concessions, Phukan says, the school responded to the article by re-assigning the Oracle\u2019s faculty journalism adviser, tenured teacher Carla Gomez, and slashing the school\u2019s Introduction to Journalism course, citing low enrollment. In response, Phukan and Gomez called the Student Press Law Center (SPLC), a non-profit that defends the press freedoms of student journalists in the US.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen this happened, I didn\u2019t even realize what censorship even was, or the extent,\u201d Phukan says. \u201cOftentimes people think of censorship as physically pulling a story from a paper. But it can come in the form of funding cuts, or intimidation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The SPLC connected the student journalists with local legal counsel via their attorney referral network. The Oracle\u2019s journalists filed a lawsuit against the school, accusing the administration of \u201cbullying, threatening and coerc[ing]\u201d the journalist, and punishing their adviser through reassignment.<\/p>\n
<\/span>From left to right: Oracle scholastic journalists Myesha Phukan, Hanna Olson and Renuka Mungee.<\/span> Photograph: Cate Graney\/Verde Magazine\/Palo Alto High School<\/p>\n The complaint, filed in the Santa Clara county superior court, accuses Mountain View\u2019s principal, Kip Glazer, of exercising \u201cher authority and position to exert enormous and unlawful pressure\u201d over the paper and its writers. Their filings in the civil lawsuit claim that the administration\u2019s actions stand in violation of both education code (in the case of censoring the students) and state labor law (in the case of reprimanding the newspaper\u2019s faculty adviser).<\/p>\n Although Mountain View Los Altos high school district did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian. Lawyers representing Glazer and the Mountain View Los Altos high school district would also not comment on ongoing litigation, beyond noting that they have recently filed for a summary judgment to dismiss all charges, maintaining that the article in question contained \u201cactionable defamation\u201d and that the school \u201clawfully limited student speech to maintain professional standards\u201d.<\/p>\n They may well have to prove that in court. The lawyers representing the students, told a local paper that they were \u201cfeeling pretty confident\u201d about the case and prepared to take it \u201call the way to trial\u201d.<\/p>\n The Oracle\u2019s hard-nosed investigative reporters aren\u2019t the only ones making calls to the SPLC. Requests related to active censorship of articles and editorial content were up 17% in the past academic year. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen an explosion of calls coming into our hotline,\u201d says Mike Hiestand, SPLC\u2019s senior legal counsel.<\/p>\n The SPLC isn\u2019t the only group taking an interest in threats to the student press. The Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Fire), also runs the Student Press Freedom Initiative (SPFI). These groups have become more prominent at an auspicious time. The Trump White House has proven incredibly hostile to journalism, from personal attacks on individual journalists, to sustained criticism of news organizations which the US president paints as, \u201cthe enemy of the American people\u201d.<\/p>\n According to Hiestand, this broader, politicized attitude towards the traditional arteries of the fourth estate have a knock-on effect on student journalism, even at the high school level. \u201cIt has an impact,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to avoid that trickle-down effect, when [journalists] are called the enemy of the people.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cStudent journalists can experience threats from all angles,\u201d says Marie McMullen, the program director and lead counsel of Fire\u2019s SPFI. \u201cThey\u2019re facing the same media law and press concerns that journalists out in the field are facing, such as defamation. They\u2019re navigating complicated media law concepts [like] reporters at national publications. And they\u2019re also facing pressure from within their own walls.\u201d<\/p>\n The SPLC says that stories about high school students protesting against ICE and CBP actions were the most commonly censored articles across the student press this year. At the post-secondary level, the SPLC has observed a big uptick in censorship around stories concerning Israel\u2019s ongoing war against Palestine, and coverage of Palestinian solidarity protests.<\/p>\n Hiestand of the SPLC says that the group\u2019s hotline was overwhelmed with calls when the Tufts University student R\u00fcmeysa \u00d6zt\u00fcrk was snatched off the street by plainclothes ICE agents near her home in Massachusetts, and detained in Louisiana without charge \u2013 all in an apparent response to a school newspaper op-ed criticizing Israel\u2019s military actions in Gaza. \u201cWe\u2019ve been dealing with issues we\u2019ve never had to deal with, at least on this sort of scale,\u201d says Hiestand.<\/p>\n While most of these cases never go public, the SPLC made headlines earlier this year in a high-profile case. A Marin county, California, woman threatened to sue a school district, after teenage journalist Ben Mueller published an article linking her to the disgraced child abuse trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Mueller was merely completing a journalism assignment, where he scoured the Epstein files for any mention of his local town. In the easily searchable files released by the Department of Justice, he discovered emails between Epstein and a local woman associated with an area modeling agency. Mueller claimed that this woman had been \u201cproviding models to Epstein\u201d in a post on the Instagram of the Redwood Bark, the award-winning student newspaper of Redwood high school in Larkspur, California. Mueller consulted the SPLC, and met school board administrators. In the end, the reporting remained intact, and the legal threat dissipated.<\/p>\n Under the first amendment, school newspapers are granted a lot of freedom to publish. Legally, the SPLC and Fire mostly defer to two major supreme court decisions, which have shaped the rights and privileges of student journalists in the United States.<\/p>\n double quotation markSchool officials want to not ruffle any feathers and student media don\u2019t allow them to do that sometimesMike Hiestand<\/p>\n In 1969, a group of students across the Des Moines, Iowa, school district organized to wear black armbands to their schools to protest against the Vietnam war. Administrators caught wind of the action in advance, and warned the students that their protest could cause a significant disruption within their schools, and result in suspension. When the students proceeded with their plan, and were suspended, their parents sued the school for violating their children\u2019s rights to free speech, vouchsafed under the first amendment of the US constitution. A 7-2 supreme court decision ruled that school administrators could not restrict freedom of expression under the suspicion that it may disrupt learning activities, and that students do not \u201cshed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate\u201d.<\/p>\n A slightly more recent case complicated the board freedoms afforded to students by the Tinker vs Des Moines decision. In 1988, students in a journalism class at Hazelwood East high school in St Louis, Missouri, published a series of articles about teen pregnancy and parental divorce in their school paper, the Spectrum. The school\u2019s principals struck these stories before publication, on the basis that they could cause reputation damage to the school. The paper\u2019s editor, Cathy Kuhlmeier, claimed her first amendment rights were being infringed upon. In a 5-3 decision, the supreme court sided with the administration. Because the Spectrum was funded in part by the school, the court maintained that the school\u2019s brass had a legitimate interest in dictating its content.<\/p>\n <\/span>Tammy Hawkins, editor of the Hazelwood East high school newspaper, the Spectrum, holds a copy of the paper, on 14 January 1988.<\/span> Photograph: James A Finley\/AP<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a much more conservative supreme court in 1988,\u201d Hiestand says. \u201cI think it blew every first amendment attorney\u2019s mind. They said that principals could censor speech if that speech was \u2018inconsistent with the shared values of a civilized social order\u2019. It\u2019s mind-blowingly vague and nebulous.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u201cHazelwood standard\u201d, as it is now called, looms over cases such as Mountain View. When schools, and school boards, have an active interest in funding the operations of student papers, they are entitled to exercise editorial control. That said, 18 states \u2013 including California \u2013 have since enacted legislation, typically called New Voices laws, to protect student journalism against censorious administrations. The New Voices laws, adopted at the state level, hold closer to the Tinker standard, maintaining that the student press can only be censored under a very limited range of circumstances, involving slander, libel or the unwarranted invasion of privacy.<\/p>\n Even with these legal frameworks, the biggest challenge to student papers is administrative timidity from institutions. Often hard-pressed, underpaid school administrators just want to keep their heads down. In such cases, groups such as the Fire\u2019s SPFI and the SPLC seem more than happy to remind administrators of students\u2019 rights \u2013 and their own obligations under the constitution. \u201cSchool officials want to not ruffle any feathers,\u201d Hiestand says. \u201cAnd student media don\u2019t allow them to do that sometimes. That\u2019s a point of contention.\u201d<\/p>\n Aidan McClaren, a junior at Gretna east high school in Omaha, Nebraska, a state that doesn\u2019t have New Voices Laws. <\/p>\n Like many young Americans, the 17-year-old student journalist had been inundated on social media with posts and videos about US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations across the country.<\/p>\n For McClaren, the moment carried eerie resonances to the Palmer Raids of 1919-1920, and the internment of Japanese Americans during the second world war. A member of Gretna East\u2019s student newspaper, the Wingspan, he channeled his feelings into an editorial cartoon.<\/p>\n The resulting cartoon depicts what he calls a \u201chistory factory\u201d. Conveyor belts churn out armored police vehicles (labelled \u201cmilitarized presence\u201d) and miniature cages (labelled \u201cdetentions without charge\u201d). The machinery of the factory is a set of spinning gears marked \u201cbureaucracy\u201d and \u201cloopholes\u201d. A young student, knapsack hung over his back, stands watching, wondering: \u201cWhy does this look familiar \u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI just think it\u2019s horrible,\u201d McClaren says of ICE\u2019s actions. \u201cIt sucks to see people treated inhumanely.\u201d His cartoon reflected these deep misgivings. Like many newspaper political cartoons, it was frank and unsubtle.<\/p>\n double quotation markThe moment a school teaches its students that journalism exists to protect the powerful from scrutiny, it has failed its most basic civic missionAiden McClaren<\/p>\n McClaren shared the cartoon with his editors. They loved it. And they rushed it to print. There was an immediate response. Online traffic surged to the Wingspan\u2019s website. Within 48 hours, McClaren says, he received an email from school administrators telling him and his editors that they had to remove the cartoon. McClaren says he was told the school was receiving so many complaints that administrators and secretaries couldn\u2019t keep up with the volume. According to McClaren, one administrator suggested that the paper would need to publish a pro-ICE editorial cartoon, in the interest of editorial balance.<\/p>\n Whatever the rationale, the cartoon was ultimately struck from the paper\u2019s site. Frustrated, McClaren penned an op-ed for the paper about the experience of being censored. \u201cThe moment a school teaches its students that journalism exists to protect the powerful from scrutiny,\u201d he wrote, \u201cit has failed its most basic civic mission.\u201d Adding insult to injury, the school\u2019s higher-ups intervened to censor that<\/em>, too. He says the administrators claimed that they reserved \u201cprior review\u201d over the paper\u2019s content. In a freshman journalism class, McClaren had learned about the SPLC. And he made the call.<\/p>\n The SPLC\u2019s staff explained the finer points of the Tinker and Hazelwood decisions, saying that censorship of the cartoon didn\u2019t seem to be justified under even the latter, more admin-friendly ruling. Fire also contacted the school district, explaining how their actions were constitutionally unsound.<\/p>\n <\/span>Aidan McClaren\u2019s editorial cartoon. <\/span> Illustration: Courtesy of Aidan McClaren<\/p>\n A spokesperson from Gretna east high school told the Guardian that, after the controversy, the school board was working to adopt new policies that will help both student journalists and their advisers navigate coverage of more hot-button issues, and \u201cwill put the district, administrators, sponsors, and students in a better position moving forward and help eliminate confusion\u201d.<\/p>\n But McClaren says they refused to share the drafted policies with the Wingspan. \u201cIt\u2019s not what we wanted,\u201d McClaren admits. His concern is that these new policies, and the decision-making process behind them, may well have decreased transparency, rather than improved it.<\/p>\n Learning to deal with the hyperlitigiousness of aggrieved sources, or censoriousness of administrative higher-ups, is great training for young journalists and reporters. The experience also looks good on a journalism school application. Oracle alum Myesha Phukan is now studying at UC Berkeley, and working on the school\u2019s newspaper. She also helps other scholastic journalists as an intern and member of the SPLC\u2019s New Voices program. \u201cI want to go into first amendment and media litigation law now,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n McClaren has been similarly motivated. He\u2019s working with his journalism advisers and members of SPLC to draft new legislation, which he hopes to introduce as a ballot measure next year. \u201cIt would reverse the Hazelwood standard,\u201d he says. \u201cIt would give a lot more freedom to high school and college students in Nebraska.\u201d<\/p>\n More than meddling in scholastic politics, groups like Fire and the SPLC are protecting what they regard as a vanguard of the so-called fifth estate. Because many student-run publications are operated as not-for-profits, they are not beholden to advertisers or subscribers. Instead, they are fueled pretty much entirely by the tenacity and principles of their students and staff advisers. \u201cThese students have chosen to engage, and share their options and ideas,\u201d Hiestand says. \u201cIt provides me with a lot of optimism. 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