“Hazelwood, hazelnut, Hazel-what?
The Supreme Court’s historic Hazelwood decision (1988) is important because it gave principals, teachers and other members of the administration the right to edit and even delete students’ work, if it goes against the school’s mission.
Hazelwood said, “We hold that educators do not offend the First Amendment by exercising editorial control over the style and content of student speech in school-sponsored expressive activities so long as their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns.”
Ten years after Hazelwood, what’s the status of high school journalism? Bleak—this year has been a record year for legal requests at the Virginia-based Student Press Law Center, which helps high school and college students with censorship and other legal problems. But the center’s founder and attorney Mark Goodman says, “Every year tends to be a record year. Censorship is becoming more and more accepted. And, as a result, more censorship occurs.”
Why is student censorship more common? Since Hazelwood went in effect, “School officials feel more justified, because they’ve got the Supreme Court’s backing.”
Students don’t protest Hazelwood, Goodman said, because they don’t know about it. “Students are never taught their rights in school, because school officials don’t want them to know.”
According to Goodman, it’s like allowing the mayor of a city to edit the city newspaper. It not only “hurts the newspaper’s ability to accurately report”, but “a government official [such as a principal or mayor] controlling individual expression sends a disturbing lesson to students about what freedom is.” Goodman said he believes that, if people blindly accept Hazelwood, a generation of future voters, writers, and reporters will “learn to not question” the system. At one Illinois school, Goodman said, the administration was spending thousands of dollars from educational funds on inappropriate expenses, such as hotel rooms, food, and conventions. At the same time, extracurricular activities were being cut, for lack of funds. When students found out about the situtation, they wanted to report it in the school paper, to educate the public. However, because the article wasn’t “a booster to the school, didn’t enhance its image,” the administration killed the article, Goodman said.
Has Hazelwood done any good? Executive Director Donna Myrow founded LA Youth right after the Hazelwood decision.Her purpose was to offer a free and independent forum to teens. The presence of independent publications like LA Youth sends an important message to administrators and students, namely that “Censorship does not work. It can’t stop students from talking about subjects we don’t want to see. It may limit students in one context, but it only pushes them to other [forums],” said Goodman.
How does Hazelwood affect you? In 1976, California became the first state to enact student press laws. So far, only five others have followed suit. Although California’s student press laws take precedence over Hazelwood, Hazelwood’s very existence has a trickle-down effect. But, because some California principals know about California’s laws and “ignore” them, Goodman says that “Students have an obligation to stand up for free expression of others, if they want their own rights to be protected. They must be willing to stand up for the rights of others.”
For more info, call the Student Press Law Center at (703) 807-1904. Try to call between 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern time—that’s 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. California time. E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: www.splc.org”
