Taking Prophylactic Measures

Julian Sanchez | November 29, 2005

Via Romenesko, a Tennessee school apparently went to the trouble of confiscating all 1,800 copies of the student paper because it contained an article on birth control that, among other things, informed students that they could get contraception without parental permission—a tidbit I'd have hoped wouldn't come as news to most anyway. Even leaving aside the noxiousness of the attempt to keep students ignorant on this score, you'd think school officials would have realized how phenomenally this would backfire. I don't know how widely read the student paper at that high school generally is—I'd guess maybe half of students read at least some of ours—but it's a sure thing that every kid in the school now knows why the paper got pulled.

Comments

|11.29.05 @ 4:08PM|#

...a Tennessee school...

Is this a surprise to anyone?

|11.29.05 @ 4:11PM|#

Yes, the best way to protect our children is to keep information from them...

|11.29.05 @ 4:13PM|#

The real question is, why is the government of Tennessee in the business of using unpaid child labor to produce officially-sanctioned propaganda. The fact that said government lost control of it's propaganda organ is a secondary consideration.

|11.29.05 @ 4:16PM|#

NOW THAT'S WIERD!
The comment counter said "1", so I clicked to read it. But I see no comment at all. Was the lone comment pulled by the school officials as well?

|11.29.05 @ 4:18PM|#

That reminds me of a few incidents at my Jesuit high school, one of which involved the school paper. Although I don't remember the details, I believe the reporters were doing a story on the prevalence of teen sex. They were forbidden to mention condoms, so they set the type so that it would spell condom down the left margin. Immature and pointless, but funny.
On another occasion, a planned parenthood type group stood just off campus handing out condoms. The Jebbies stood just inside the door collecting said condoms.
I did do my bit in the great rubber wars on the early 90s. I volunteered for an organization that was big on condoms, and ended up being the guy who others came to for rubbers. Hell, they were free, and irksome as it was, I had no real use for them.

Now that I've regaled you with jimmy hat stories, I'll exit stage left.

|11.29.05 @ 4:23PM|#

This is what happens when you ban the Potter books without reading them. If they read the fifth book they'd know that banning an article is the best way to get people to read it.

|11.29.05 @ 4:26PM|#

I don't know if Barfy is a troll, a parodist, or for real. Whichever, he's funny.

|11.29.05 @ 4:30PM|#

Yes, the best way to protect our children is to keep information from them...

Well, after all, it is a school...

VM goddammit what a fucking aw|11.29.05 @ 4:35PM|#

stevo:

:)

who's there

-----------

the cop out approach, like in that cato article would be to talk about how private schools would avoid this. that's where the neutrality is actually picking a side, passively.

but the "passive position" is what the gov't wants, thesedays.

(grrrrrr)

|11.29.05 @ 4:44PM|#

...the cop out approach, like in that cato article would be to talk about how private schools would avoid this.

I have to agree here. The complete privatization of education is a pipe dream and doesn't address the issue at hand. Public schools exist, and probably always will in one form or another. If it's paid for with our tax dollars, then shouldn't government-run schools follow the same rules that we set for the rest of the government? (i.e. The Bill of Rights)

Furthermore, why should a 16 year old be barred from the same rights to free speech and press as a 60 year old? Why are their ideas subject to censorship?

|11.29.05 @ 4:50PM|#

We must save the children from the children for the children

|11.29.05 @ 4:51PM|#

Not that I think it's right or am defending it at all, but I can understand the decision of the administrators to a certain extent:

It is easier to deal with pissed off students than pissed off parents.

I'd wager that there is no shortage of administrators and faculty that disapprove of the removal of the story.

|11.29.05 @ 4:52PM|#

"Ignorance is strength"

I�m glad to hear that the students are fighting back; this at least shows that some people in the public school system are not complete morons

|11.29.05 @ 4:55PM|#

Akira MacKenzie,

If it's paid for with our tax dollars, then shouldn't government-run schools follow the same rules that we set for the rest of the government?

Depends on the nature of the forum (according to the SCOTUS).

|11.29.05 @ 5:02PM|#

"It is easier to deal with pissed off students than pissed off parents."
Comment by: downstater at November 29, 2005 04:51 PM

I think that this proves the popular theory that employees of the government do not like to well you know...work.

|11.29.05 @ 5:04PM|#

I think the administrators would be supported in this decision by SCOTUS in Hazelwood School District v Kuhlmeier

|11.29.05 @ 5:07PM|#

zeiner,

how are they not, y'know...working?

|11.29.05 @ 5:22PM|#

The newspaper is an instrumentality of the school. As such, what is written there bears the schools "imprimatur". Therefore the school can control it.

On the other hand, if that girl had gone to school with a t-shirt with an unpopular political message, she'd be ok.

|11.29.05 @ 5:24PM|#

Toxic,

If the school decided to create a pool of money (or some other resource) and opened it to all comers and then decided to censor someone, then the school would be in trouble.

|11.29.05 @ 5:37PM|#

The administration does own the press, so they can legally dictate what will be published. This is, of course, why most school papers are nothing but PR sheets for the school and filled with nothing but toadying to the administation(come to think of it, that explains something about the average 'journalist.')

Garth|11.29.05 @ 5:45PM|#

I went to that High School all four years and graduated from it.... and I gotta say, at the time it was actually one of the more progressive ones in the state even though a goodly number of the faculty were religious nutbars who would speak out openly about their faith to the class....

So in the end, I am not surprised.

|11.29.05 @ 5:47PM|#

downstater,
The school administrators tried to look for the easy way out and censored the article. I think that the administrators should have talked to the students and their parents in some kind of open forum before they pulled an �Orwell� on the student body.

Hopefully this will spark some kind of debate within the community on the roll of their public school and free speech.

Basically all I was trying to say is that the administrators would rather sit on their asses and try to keep the status quo, instead of dealing with the problems that naturally arise when you have a shit load of teenagers speaking their mind and getting involved

|11.29.05 @ 5:52PM|#

What I can't wait to hear about is the dismay the administrators will feel when some industrious subversive scans and posts the damn thing on the Internet and broadcasts it to his/her friends. As Julian hinted, the best way to make something desirable is to ban it. The admins just ensure that every single student in the school will know about birth control by week's end.

[tinfoil hat]Think it was all a reverse-psychology plot by those progressive members of the school Garth alluded to in order to spread the birth-control information?

|11.29.05 @ 5:57PM|#

zeiner,

Your conclusion makes sense, I can see how you arrived there. I just drew a different one. I viewed the administration as responding (perhaps too quickly) to what would surely be a chorus of shrieking outraged parents. They are the other half of their constituency (aside from the students) and the much more powerful one. So I didn't see it as lazy, just a less-crappy and more practical way of dealing with the inevitable.

I too like your idea of a forum to discuss these things, but sincerely doubt the willingness of the parents to participate - as those outraged likely do not think these issues should be discussed at all.

|11.29.05 @ 6:39PM|#

downstater,

"...but sincerely doubt the willingness of the parents to participate - as those outraged likely do not think these issues should be discussed at all."

Sad but true.

|11.29.05 @ 6:41PM|#

If I was a school administrator, I would allow the article about birth control. But if anyone tried to hand out condoms, I would confiscate them.

Because I know that many of them would end up filled with water (or worse), then thrown at my head.

|11.29.05 @ 6:58PM|#

Contrary to some of the opinions offered by armchair constitutional theorists here, it's not true that a public school is totally free to censor the student newspaper. Basically, if the paper is set up as an independent-ish publication, run by the students with adult supervision only when necessary, then the school can't censor it. On the other hand, if the paper is run by the teacher and the kids just follow his orders, then the school can censor the paper. That's for high school papers. For college papers, the school has somewhat less right to censor.

|11.29.05 @ 7:23PM|#

Your species is a foolish one. Why would parents get upset that their children got access to information that was public knowledge anyway? Why wouldn't they just talk to their kids about sex instead of getting upset at the school administrators?

Fortunately, I've taken the liberty to nocturnally impregnate all of the daughters of these moralistic ninnies. Tighter p#ssy than back home in Andromeda, to be sure!

|11.29.05 @ 10:44PM|#

Journalist-My college paper found an easy solution to the adminstration/meddling issue. We realized that we generated enough ad revenue to be self-supporting, and declared ourselved independent.

|11.29.05 @ 11:34PM|#

The only legitimate purpose I can see for public schools is to prepare young people for citizenship. What do we teach them by sending them somewhere their words can be censored, their clothing can be dictated, their piss can be tested, their lockers can be searched with no pretence, and their lives are ruled by unresponsive and incompetant beaurocrats who lie to them routinley (my apologies to the minority of smart and dedicated school teachers and administrators).

My hope is that someday we shall reap a whirlwind of anti-establishment fury, but they will probably just get used to it.

|11.30.05 @ 9:30AM|#

I got my education
back behind the barn