A Synthesis Model for Passing State Student Press Legislation

In the years since the U.S. Supreme Court gave public school administrators nearly absolute control of school-sponsored student publications (Hazelwood, 1988), supporters of the student press in 29 states have tried to convince their politicians to protect student expression by state statute ("Arkansas Makes Six," 1995).(1) Efforts have been successful in Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, and Massachusetts, which increased to six the number of states having some form of statutory protection for student expression in school-sponsored publications. Prior to 1988, only California had included such protection in its Education Code. Shortly after the Hazelwood decision, one educator called upon university schools and departments to "help the Third Press to secure laws forbidding censorship" (Knight, 1988, p. 47), while others decried the kind of censorship allowed under the Court's new guidelines (Garneau, 1988; Hentoff, 1988; "Hazelwood: Experts React," 1988). Additionally, there emerged a new focus on research that could be related to successful campaigns for student publications legislation. The most helpful research has specifically tapped two areas: how principals, scholastic press association directors, journalism advisers, and students view various aspects of student publications; and what strategies are successful in securing political support for legislation. Very few scholarly studies or popular media articles have addressed the ways these two types of information may be synthesized to produce positive results, but such a synthesis was successful in the battle to gain student publications legislation in Arkansas (Plopper, 1995). With a failure rate of 83 percent in the 28 other states where efforts have been made to pass student press legislation since 1988, it may be time to reconsider the tactics being used by proponents of such legislation. By synthesizing views of the student press and information about successful political strategy, this study proposes a model for passing student press legislation. It also suggests that journalism and mass communication faculty take a major role in implementing the model. The student press In mid-1988, Click and Kopenhaver reported a nationwide study of high school principals and publications advisers that showed both groups, by overwhelming percentages, favored prior review of student publications (p. 50). Dickson (1989) reported that 98.6 percent of the Missouri principals he surveyed expected journalism advisers to talk to them if the advisers had any questions about the appropriateness of material scheduled for publication, and he documented several categories of subject matter that principals thought they would suppress in a student publication, if they found it objectionable (p. 171). Dvorak, Lain, and Dickson (1994), citing Dickson's previously unpublished 1990 nationwide study of high school newspaper advisers, reported that the kind of newspaper content causing the most conflict was that which was considered to be "not fair or balanced" (p. 290). Click, Kopenhaver, and Hatcher (1993) surveyed principals and journalism advisers nationwide, asking about their attitudes toward student press freedom. They found that the two groups differed "significantly in their attitudes toward factors relating to student newspapers" (p. 69) and suggested, "Advisers may be well advised to work with their principals to narrow this gap" (p. 69). Olson, Van Ommeren, and Rossow (1993) asked the nation's scholastic press association directors about their attitudes toward the student press and found high agreement with the statement, "High school journalism advisers should review all copy before it is printed" (p. 11). They also concluded, "Concerning press rights, the directors believe that high school journalists should be granted First Amendment protection coupled with a strong commitment, as one director puts it, to 'teaching, not supervision, advising, not control'" (p. …