Teachers, help students embrace their 1st Amendment rights

Student journalists gather from New Jersey at the Garden State Scholastic Press Asscoaition to listen to my lecture on political engagement. Many young journalists self censor for fear that “they cannot write about what they want to.” Photo by Walter Bowne

At the Garden State Scholastic Press Association conference at Rutgers, a week before Halloween last year, Alfred P. Doblin, the editorial page editor of “The Record,” asked the student journalists whether any of them had faced censorship.

Hands shot up.

One by one, students discussed various stories that the administrations refused to print.

One student journalist said how her newspaper wanted to run a story about teenage pregnancy, but the school officials thought such a story “was not appropriate for a school newspaper.”

Mr. Doblin asked, “How did your adviser feel about the story?”

“She wanted to keep her job,” the student replied.

The journalism adviser has a right to worry. Advisors must promote, encourage, and support the freedom of speech of students. And yet, advisers are part of an institution that may not like or agree what is printed.

What, then, should an adviser do when school officials employ prior restraint? Under the threat of this rather dubious euphemism for censorship, advisers are caught between two storms: supporting the Constitution and covering his or her own derriere.