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The Harbinger Staff
In August of this year, Basehor-Linwood School District, located in eastern Kansas, announced a new policy which prevented the publishing of memorials in both newspapers and yearbooks. The policy, which was later revised to comply with Kansas laws, included special student press coverage of student deaths under the list of tributes deemed inappropriate.
In an effort to change the new policy, Student Press Law Center and Kansas Scholastic Press Association, represented by Attorney Mark Johnson, met with members of the school board to inform them of the violations of the Kansas Student Publications Act. Nicole Hill, a writer at SPLC felt it was absolutely necessary to inform Basehor-Linwood that the policies were not only in violation of the constitutional rights given to the students, but were also against Kansas law.
“The policy did a number of things, one of the most concerning to us was that it limited newspaper, yearbook or any other publication from running dedication pages to classmates who had died,” Hill said. “They could still run an obituary, but not dedicate a page or article.”
The school district itself stated it was merely trying to have a plan in place to prevent against any liabilities that may arise. The president of the Basehor-Linwood School Board, Dayna Miller, stresses that the policy put in place was not unique in the state of Kansas.
“The Superintendent went out and found several memorial policies of other school boards in the state and so that is where this original policy came from,” Miller said. “We looked at it with our lawyers and the Kansas Association of School Boards before proposing it. He didn’t just decide one day to do this.”
Kansas is one of only eight states that extends additional protection to student journalists. When students on the Harbinger at SM East decided to publish an issue dealing primarily with the taboo subject of sex, they met little opposition. The administration was consulted, not for permission, but for support. Kat Buchanan, Co-Editor-in-Chief of the school’s print publication, felt that it would be reassuring to have backing from the district.
“It’s nice to have the administration behind us,” Buchanan said. “If parents, teachers or students came raging toward us or the staff wondering why we did what we did, we knew we had support from the school, not just our advisor.”
Many states offer little to no explicit legal protection for their students. At Louis D. Brandeis High School in San Antonio, Tex., members of the student publication, The BluePrint, are required by school officials to submit all work for review.
“We give them PDFs of the newspaper before we send it to press and they review it for two days and if they need to then they cut it,” Editor-in-Chief Tina Montemayor said. “Any topics that could reflect badly on the school or be considered controversial do not make it past review.”
Last year, the BluePrint decided to produce an article on hookah but it was immediately shut down.
“We couldn’t do anything about hookah even though the people we interviewed were eighteen and were talking about the negative effects of tobacco,” Montemayor said. “It’s hard to get them on our side about issues like that.”
After discussion with SPLC and KSPA, Basehor-Linwood revised its policy to allow for the publishing of dedications and memorials in student publications following the death of a fellow student. The new policy, according to district superintendent David Howard, addresses all of the concerns expressed by the school board while still complying with Kansas press law.
“The use of our building and grounds for memorial services was our main concern” Howard said. “We want to make sure we handle it consistently from year to year and I think the policy we have now allows us to do that without infringing on our students’ press rights.”
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Information from SPLC.
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