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.