Struggle Over Student Censorship Continues
Source: ACLU Southern California
A lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Southern California on behalf of student journalists in Bakersfield fighting to have their stories about gay students at their high school published in the school’s newspaper moved to deposition stage in late August.
Filed this spring in Kern County Superior Court, the lawsuit originally requested an emergency order to allow The Kernal, the school’s paper, to print the stories in the year-end issue. School administrators yanked the stories, claiming they had the potential to incite violence on campus.
In addition to publishing the stories, the students wanted the school to take steps addressing homophobia on campus. The Gay-Straight Alliance Network is also a plaintiff in the case.
Joel Paramo, lead plaintiff, was editor in chief for The Kernal at the time the lawsuit was filed. He said the goal of the series of profiles featuring LGBT students sharing their experiences was to put a human face on a difficult issue. Though East Bakersfield is a diverse school with a generally tolerant atmosphere, there is still homophobia on campus that needs to be tackled, he said. The newspaper staff hoped the articles would help the student body realize the need to be more understanding of each other’s feelings by emphasizing to them that they do in fact know gay people, and encounter them all the time within their peer group.
“It’s a matter of getting through to people who don’t really want to think about this to realize they need to,” he said. “Topics don’t need to be shoved away. They need to be discussed. By using the names of the students, people can connect with them at a different level. They can see, ‘Hey, that kid sits in front of me in English class.’ ”
For the series, The Kernal’s staff got written permission from those interviewed for the stories, as well as written permission from the parents of participants who were minors. When pressured by the administrators, the staff also agreed to blur the photos of the students and not use their real names. But after the students made these compromises, with plans to publish in the April, 2005 edition, the administration reneged and ordered the entire project killed.
That’s when the students approached the ACLU/SC. After the lawsuit was filed, school administrators decided to let the altered story run in the May 2005 edition of the paper. But by then the students were ready to fight.
Principal John Gibson, told the Associated Press that he blocked the stories because he was worried they would incite violence on campus. California’s education code lets administrators censor student publications only if articles are obscene, libelous or slanderous, or if they can be viewed to“so incite” students to engage in disruptive activities on campus.
“Our basic point is that the articles by definition don’t incite any disruptive activity,” said Christine Sun, an ACLU/SC staff attorney. “They do the very opposite of what the school is concerned about. These articles are meant to educate and promote tolerance.”
Additionally, Sun said, any anti-gay bias on campus wasn’t created by the students trying to publish neutral, educational articles.” If the school were really concerned about the safety of the LGBT students, administrators could have taken a number of other steps besides censorship, such as increasing security or holding safe-schools trainings.
“But instead of protecting the gay students, as is their obligation, the school in essence has protected those who would act violently against a minority viewpoint, by telling those persons that you have the power to silence people by your threats of violence,” Sun said. “This is antithetical to the very purpose of freedom of expression, and to the school’s obligations to provide an equal and safe learning environment for all students.”
Paramo said he’s pleased the ACLU/SC stepped in to help. The students called other organizations, with no reply.
“Without the ACLU, we probably would have just let this go, we would have felt stomped all over and we would have been silent,” Joel said. “But with the help of the ACLU we were able to do something. It’s really cool that they were there for people like us.”
Paramo said he hopes future journalism students at East Baker High will see from this example that they have rights that cannot be taken away.
“What’s the point of learning to be an American and not exercising the rights they teach you about?” he said.
The ACLU/SC intends to request a hearing before the court in the fall of 2005, so that the articles may be published after the start of the school year.
