[FYI: U.P.I. is owned by the Moon(ie) Church, as is the Washington Times.... This column is powerful.]

Censored student journalists publish on the Web



WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- More than a decade after a 1988 Supreme Court decision affirmed the right of school administrators to censor student articles, many high-school newspapers are finding a new and long-coveted sphere of freedom on the Internet, transforming the very nature of free speech for students, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

The Student Press Law Center in Arlington estimates that at least 10,000 underground high school newspapers and Web pages are floating in cyberspace and more emerge every day.

These newspapers are nothing like the innocuous pages of cafeteria menus, winning sports scores and award columns that school officials peruse and edit before printing, Mark Goodman, executive director of the center, told the Post.

For school officials, though, the online underground paper raises new concerns about how to balance the First Amendment with rising anxiety about school safety.

In the aftermath of the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado, the irreverent and sometimes off-color underground newspapers are haunting reminders of the Web pages created by the student gunmen, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, in which they spewed their anger, the Post said.

"Student newspapers and Web pages done outside of school is one of the stealth issues for schools, and it's going to become even bigger," said Edwin C. Darden, a staff attorney for the National School Boards Association. "The dilemma is that the student is off campus, and they have First Amendment rights. On the other hand, school officials have a responsibility to protect the school and not have those rights cause harm or fear within the school walls." Several court rulings have declared that the Internet is outside the reach of school officials. Students who publish independent newspapers or Web pages on home computers cannot be censored even if they focus on school issues, courts have said.

"It's incredibly exciting, healthy and an increasingly necessary outlet for high school journalists who have long been searching for freedom to express themselves," said Paul McMasters, First Amendment ombudsman at the Freedom Forum. "The fact of the matter is most school officials view their newspapers as fluffy public-relations devices. As long as those conditions don't change, students are going to find the Internet to get from under that cage." -- Copyright 2000 by United Press International.

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