Mandy+Vongsiraksa

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**Guiding Research Question: Should the school newspaper staff have the same rights to write like professional journalists?**


 * What I think: ** I chose this topic because I am on the school’s newspaper staff and we are restricted from writing about a lot of things in school. Some of the criteria that would qualify us for awards are to write about real life situations that students face. Although some topics may be controversial, it does not mean that we will necessarily write about it. We can’t make every story related to education because students wouldn’t even tune into the stories but if we do write about real life situations than more students may read it. Some of the topics that we would like to write about that aren’t even as controversial; we are still not allowed to publish it such as phones being permitted in between classes or an opinion column on the school football team. Anything that doesn’t glorify the school is not allowed in the paper. This should be an important topic to Americans because students should have free speech to write what they want. I hope to learn why some of the rules are so strict. I hope readers will learn why school publications should be allowed to write whatever they want but why they are restricted to what is able to be written.


 * **Pros of Not Censoring School Newspaper** || **Cons of Not Censoring School Newspaper** ||
 * Student body will know more about their school || Newspaper staff will write inappropriate articles ||
 * Students will receive advice on controversial issues || Some students and teachers may be offended ||
 * Students will be more informed with things that could affect them || The school might look bad ||
 * The school newspaper will be read more if there are interesting topics || Parents and community might complain saying articles are inappropriate ||
 * Happy newspaper staff || The faculty will have to deal with complaints from the community ||
 * The school newspaper is eligible for awards for its content || The newspaper will stop being funded by the school and will no longer be a class ||

**Related Court Cases:** > **Works Cited ** "131 F3d 241 Yeo v. Town of Lexington." OpenJurist. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2012. > "Journalism Education Assoc. Affidavit in ACLU, Et Al v. Reno." American Civil Liberties Union. American Civil Liberties Union, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. > "Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (1988)." USCOURTSGOV RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2012. > "Student Press Law Center Model Guidelines for High School Student Media." SPLC. Student Press Law Center, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. > "Talking Points." United States Courts. United States Courts, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. > "The Student Press Law Center's High School Top Ten List." SPLC. Student Press Law Center, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. > “TINKER v. DES MOINES IND. COMM. SCHOOL DIST.” The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 December 2012. > "Tinker v. Des Moines School District (1969)." Tinker v. Des Moines School District (1969). N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. > “Your Right to Free Expression." American Civil Liberties Union. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2012. > >
 * Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (1988)
 * Students in a school-sponsored newspaper class of Hazelwood East High school get two articles turned down for publication by the principal because he believes the articles were inappropriate and did not have proper parental consent in one of the articles. Three of the students bring the issue to court stating that their First Amendment rights were violated.
 * Court Ruling: 5 votes for Hazelwood School District, 3 votes against.
 * Because the newspaper is school-sponsored, it is eligible to be censored.
 * Tinker v. Des Moines School District (1969)
 * Three students: John Tinker, his sister and Christopher Echardt, decide to wear black armbands to school to protest against the Vietnam War. The administrators, fearing that the armbands would cause disruption, announced that students who wear black armbands to school will be at risk of suspension. When those three students wore black armbands to school, they were asked to remove it. Upon refusal to, the students were suspended. The students took the case to court.
 * Court Ruling: 7 votes for Tinker, 2 votes against.
 * Yeo v. Town of Lexington (1997)
 * Two student publications decided to not include an advertisement that promoted sexual abstinence in their publications after their school had began distributing condoms as a health matter. Yeo was a parent that had campaigned against the school before for that action but lost. He brought this problem to court because he felt that schools should do more at censoring rather than just leaving content out by choice of student publication.
 * Court Ruling: Yeo wins
 * Court says that the school should make an effort to censor the publications but still uphold the First Amendmen