Editor’s Note: Weeks before last year’s graduation, North seniors David Yaffe-Bellany and Liam Knox submitted an op-ed decrying what they charged were significant censorship measures carried out by retiring North principal Michael Zapicchi (The News, June 12, 2015). They recounted a longtime battle while reporting for North’s student newspaper, one that featured demands for pre-publication story reviews, disruptive censorship of articles, prohibitions against following newsworthy leads, as well as entire stories being cut.
Below is an op-ed from the two reporters in response to recent board-approved policies on school-sponsored publications:
On December 15, the West Windsor-Plainsboro Board of Education approved a set of misguided regulations concerning school-sponsored publications that will seriously erode the rights of student journalists.
The new regulations — based on a widely-used template designed by Strauss Esmay, a consulting firm that specializes in writing policy manuals for New Jersey school districts — require student editors to submit their publications to the school principal for approval before going to press. The new rules will impose restraints on the senior quotes featured in the yearbook and the poetry and short fiction published in the literary magazine. But the policy will most directly affect the student newspaper, the only school publication that regularly covers the sorts of controversial issues that reflect poorly on administrators. In effect, the new regulations codify the freewheeling censorship practices instituted by former High School North principal Michael Zapicchi during his final years in the district.
The regulations offer token acknowledgment of the importance of press freedoms in a democratic society. They state that “constructive criticism is encouraged” and stipulate that administrators cannot censor material merely because it is “personally offensive.” But the criteria for judging what material is inappropriate include vague, catchall provisions banning articles that lack “clear expression” and “responsible research” or that are “deemed to be harmful to impressionable students.” School officials will have no trouble justifying censorship decisions under these broad guidelines.
It is possible the Board of Education considers the new policy an improvement over the status quo — and, to be fair, the regulations do include a procedure under which student editors can appeal a disputed censorship call all the way to the superintendent and the school board. That’s certainly better than the unregulated, arbitrary censorship to which we were subjected during our time as editors of North’s Knightly News. But ultimately the new policy weakens school newspapers. Instead of creating an open and professional environment in which student reporters can learn their craft, the new regulations formalize administrative censorship. The appeal process hands oversight of the paper to a series of officials who have no business reviewing it before publication. If student newspapers were not subjected to censorship, there would be no need for an appeal process.
In the 1988 Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier decision, the U.S. Supreme Court granted school administrators the right to censor material in student publications. But schools are not required to censor student publications; the law merely allows them to do so. The Hazelwood decision gives WW-P administrators a choice: either to fulfill the promises outlined in the High School Program of Studies and teach students that newspapers are “indispensable to continuing freedom and responsible citizenship,” or to beat back student reporters with vague warnings against “disruption” to the school environment. By adopting the new policy, the board has chosen to reject its educational obligations and instead embrace a censorship regime that breeds intolerance and fear.
The new policy lays out a profoundly misguided vision of what student publications should achieve. It calls for all student publications to “foster a wholesome school spirit” and “promote and encourage other school sponsored activities.” The central tenets of strong, independent journalism — holding authority figures accountable, keeping the student community informed, checking the power of political institutions — go entirely unmentioned. The district is completely within its rights to create a school-sponsored publication with a mission to get students excited about the homecoming pep rally. It just can’t call that publication a newspaper.
WW-P’s student press has an especially important role to play over the next few months, as the district continues to navigate a period of serious upheaval. There is widespread confusion over controversial changes to the weighting of cumulative exams and to the format of fourth- and fifth-grade math instruction. Student journalists can help clarify widespread misconceptions about the changes and document the racially divisive debate over student stress that has rocked WW-P for the past couple of months.
But instead of fostering continued discussion, the new policy changes appear calculated to suppress student contributions to the ongoing debates. The regulations explicitly stipulate that student publications cannot endorse school board candidates or comment on any matter at issue in a school election. This rule is presumably designed to protect WW-P from lawsuits alleging district-sponsored interference in school elections, and in past years, it might have been unfair to assume that such a rule was in any way politically motivated. But given the timing of these changes, it seems at least possible that the prohibition against endorsements also represents an embarrassing and cowardly attempt to stifle the kind of student-driven political uprising that recently jeopardized board Vice President Michele Kaish’s reelection.
The district would be well advised to launch comprehensive reforms of the high school journalism program. It should take steps to lessen the conflicts of interest inherent in the phrase “school-sponsored publication” by appointing individuals with professional reporting experience to work for the two high schools solely as newspaper advisors. It should protect the newspaper staff from administrative interference and prohibit school officials from deliberately intimidating student journalists. And it should make it easier to join the school newspaper, so that participation is not limited to those few highly motivated students whose class schedules are flexible enough to accommodate the journalism elective.
The policy changes announced last month will do nothing to advance those goals. On the contrary, the regulations seem designed to further entrench an anti-educational censorship regime that will stifle student voices during a moment of profound reckoning for the district.
David Yaffe-Bellany, a freshman at Yale University, is the former editor-in-chief of the Knightly News. Liam Knox, a freshman at Tufts University, is the former opinion editor. Both are 2015 alumni of High School North.
