January 6-12, 2005

city beat

Gag Order

SPEECHLESS: "It's hard to make our voices heard," says Zach Marks, sports editor of Central High School's student newspaper. Photo By: Mike Mergen

The state school board could soon curtail student expression.

by J.F. Pirro

Tempest Carter laughs, then agrees her first name alone could scare and scatter any school administrator, especially when she's carrying her pen, notebook and tape recorder. Born a month premature, the Roxborough High School senior says she was rocking and wailing away in an incubator when her parents named her.

"Even then, I was sticking up for what's right and for what I believed in," Carter says.

That's one reason she's co-editor of The Ridge Record, Roxborough's student newspaper. It's also why last year she was at the center of some controversy after writing two stories. One was about fights between girls; the other took a fresh angle on the SEPTA mess: When buses arrive late or not at all, it often results in a clash in the community, she says.

"Kids eventually start walking down Ridge Avenue, then the store owners see these black boys in their hoodies and start closing early," says Carter, who is bussed in from Olney. "They don't want us in their stores. It's blatant, so I wrote about it."

The freedom of student journalists like Carter to tackle such touchy topics in the future is the essence of an ongoing state-level debate. In short, their right to expression could be seriously curtailed this year.

As early as February, the state Board of Education could add two conservative U.S. Supreme Court decisions to the wording of the section of the Pennsylvania School Code that defines students' First Amendment rights. By adding Bethel School District v. Fraser (1986) and Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988) to the long-cited, liberal Tinker et al v. Des Moines Community School District (1969), school administrators would have more control over the student press and all other forms of student expression. Also, the board wants to add the words "or serious" to a stipulation that says students can express themselves freely unless their expression "threatens immediate [or serious] harm" to their school or community.

However, the Pennsylvania School Press Association and the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association say "or serious" provides too much interpretive latitude, thus complicating the provision. Also, PNA claims it was never part of the language that was presented for public debate.

The board, which withdrew the final form of the regulation before the holidays, has until Dec. 22, 2005, to resubmit it. It could do so for a vote at the next meeting of the Independent Regulatory Review Commission in February. The House and Senate Education Committees also vote on the measure, said Jim Buckheit, the Board of Education's executive director.

State Rep. James R. Roebuck Jr., the Democratic chair of the House Education Committee whose district encompasses West and Southwest Philadelphia, says he'll oppose the measure, but if it passes, he says he doesn't anticipate a sudden wave of censorship.

The School District of Philadelphia has its own published student expression regulations, which were last revised Dec. 17, 1990. Its language supports the "maximum freedom of expression to students."

However, that would no longer be the case if the state's School Code changes, and that irks the likes of Cathy Rex, adviser of Roxborough's Ridge Record. She says she was blindsided by news of the proposed expression changes but not surprised.

"I already fight apathy with students, but this will beat all the passion and creativity out of them," she says. "Plus, if the code allows administrators to be more tentative, I know they will be."

While Rex has been on a half-year sabbatical, Carter says publishing the newspaper, under interim adviser Nancy "Nikki" Salice, has become an "afterthought." Also, she says, new principal Rebecca Mitchell has made it clear: no controversy or negativity.

"We did it in the past, but we're starting to see a little taste of what will be," Carter says, suggesting disappointment with the possible changes and dismay at the temporary loss of a supportive adviser.

"All I've said is that the stories have to be thoroughly researched and represent both sides, not just the side they believe in," Mitchell explains.

Representing both sides is easier said than done.

In November's issue of Onas, the student newspaper at William Penn High School, news editor Latoyia Hall wrote a front-page story and an editorial bemoaning staff budget cuts and Penn's pitiful PSSA results (13.5 percent of the 87.7 percent who took the tests rated proficient, she reported). No teacher or administrator would submit to an interview, she says, just like a fire story she reported last year.

"I always get a run-around," the junior says. "What's so evil about what I'm interested in?"

Now, her job could get even tougher.

"It will be a complete and utter disaster," Hall predicts of the proposed revisions. "When you tell kids they can't do something, it makes them want to do it even more. If I can't say what I want in my newspaper at my own school, I will start my own newspaper."

William Hollenbach, Penn's communication program director, says his students need to be able to write about what's important to them.

"As long as they can back it up, it's too bad for the administration," he says.

In an edition of Onas last year, Principal Leonard Heard's visibility was the subject of an editorial headlined "Heard, never seen." (Heard did not return multiple requests for an interview for this story.)

And after Philly's public schools recently banned bake sales, Central High School's student television network was not permitted to air student reaction, according to senior Zach Marks, who is on the broadcast team and is sports editor for The Centralizer, the school newspaper.

In general, Central's principal, Sheldon Pavel, admits some topics for student broadcast or publication may be appropriate, "but sometimes the approach has to change" as part of "the learning process."

For instance, Marks says the disciplinary office has been "power hungry" this semester and some 100 seniors have lost privileges. The topic's a no-no, he says, whereas Pavel cites his concern for student privacy.

"In the past, it seems we had more freedoms," Marks says. "It's hard to make our voices heard."

Back at Roxborough, Carter says even a poetry club wasn't supported this year. The adults, she says, are scared of anything creative.

"Yet they pound it into our brains that we're supposed to be stupid and complacent," she says. "I can't accept that, and I don't want others to accept that."

That's why she plans to keep wailing away, even as people in Harrisburg debate her right to do so.

"Everyone is putting lids on kids," Carter says, "but when people stay inside too long, after a while, they don't want to reach out anymore."