Published on Oct 23, 2015 by ReasonTV
Administrators at one California high school reacted in all the wrong ways when student reporters tried to write a newspaper article about the recent dismissal of a popular teacher and debate coach.
San Gabriel High School principal Jim Schofield sent an email telling newspaper adviser Jennifer Kim to kill the story and suggested running a fluffy profile piece instead. Kim backed her students when they wanted to fight for their right to publish, and she was later suspended and remains on indefinite administrative leave. Officials from San Gabriel High and the Alhambra Unified School District declined to comment.
The free speech rights of public high school students can be a complicated matter, so Reason TV brought in Ken White, a First Amendment attorney, blogger at Popehat, and Reason contributing editor, to parse some of legal issues. He says that although the Supreme Court and California law offer some guidance, he’s concerned about an educational environment in which administrators model anti-speech values.
“I worry about a generation of kids whose rights have not only been taken away but who have been taught by overcautious school administrators to scorn rights, to not believe in them, and to question them,” says White.
High school administrators these days follow orders from the fed if they want any funds. Bribary, pure and simple. “Your students will drink the koolaid when we tell you to let them drink the koolaid.”
“The free speech rights of public high school students can be a complicated matter,….”
No; there’s nothing complicated about it. Everyone in America has the same unalienable right to freely express themselves. The reason for claiming there’s something complicated about it is only a back-door approach to infringing upon the right with this or that restriction, just as they’ve done with the second article.
“It’s complicated” means you need to hire a lawyer to find out what you can say, and your right to free speech no longer exists if that’s the case.
“Kim backed her students when they wanted to fight for their right to publish,…”
jews have the corner on that market.
“I worry about a generation of kids whose rights have not only been taken away but who have been taught by overcautious school administrators to scorn rights, to not believe in them, and to question them,” says White.”
“overcautious school administrators”?
Is that what they’re calling communists these days?