Student journalists at Stevenson high school’s Statesmen are being forced to publish a censored version of their award winning student newspaper.
Last week school administrators asked that some articles in the paper be eliminated. School officials were particularly concerned about a story that that used anonymous sources and talked about alleged illegal activities on campus.
Officials asked that the objectionable stories be pulled from the issue but student editors refused and the paper was held.
Rather than keep the newspaper from running for another week, administrators ordered students to publish the monthly paper without the objectionable stories.
“We were basically told it was part of the curriculum," Student Editor Pam Selman told the Daily Herald.
So on Tuesday, student editors laid out the pages for the November issue, and administrators chose the stories. Articles on Thanksgiving and basketball made the cut, none of the controversial stories did.
The student editors tried another form of protest – called a byline strike – when they temporarily refused to put their names on stories. But school administrators nixed that idea as well.
