S-C senior's column yanked from school paper

S-C senior's column yanked from school paper

By Allison Elyse Gualtieri

The Sedalia Democrat

November 17, 2007 - 9:38PM














Travis McMullen

Students at Smith-Cotton High School opened the most recent issue of Tiger Tales, the student newspaper, to find a half page of white space on page 6 with a message that The Travisty, a regular column, had been pulled by the principal for “controversial issues.”

The column, written by senior Travis McMullen, criticized “emo kids,” an adolescent subculture characterized by a particular style of music and dress.

A few days before the paper was to be printed, McMullen met with Principal Todd Whitney and the paper’s adviser, Alicia Maggert, and was told that the column was being pulled, the student said.

In that meeting, McMullen said he was told, “We pulled it because we didn’t want controversy; we thought it was inflammatory.”

Maggert did not return several phone calls from The Democrat.

Whitney told the Democrat: “The article, in my opinion, could be inflammatory to a group of students. The principal also said that since Tiger Tales is a monthly publication, it was unfair to students to wait to respond.

"I think ... the people that it’s aimed toward need some equal opportunity,” Whitney said.
This is the first time that he has pulled something from the paper, Whitney said.

Whitney also said that the paper will give students the opportunity to respond to opinion pieces before they are published.

“Our goal will be to review the articles as early as possible to determine if other groups should have the opportunity to respond,” he said.

Under the 1988 Supreme Court decision Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, Whitney can censor the student paper. Student newspapers at public schools do not have always have full First Amendment protection, the decision holds.

Administrators have a lot of latitude to censor material under the law, said attorney Mike Hiestand, a legal consultant to the Student Press Law Center, a national advocacy organization.

Even though the administration is probably within its legal rights to censor writing, Hiestand said, “It’s an unfortunate lesson that I think the principal is conveying here. I think we have to get back to the notion that the First Amendment is important.”

McMullen said he is not upset that his column got censored; he is more worried about whether another version of The Travisty will appear.

“(The censorship) is remotely reasonable. Even though I don’t agree with it completely, I can see where he’s coming from,” McMullen said.

The Travisty tends to be a controversial — and popular — column.

“It wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t that inflammatory; we’ve published worse things before,” McMullen said. Last year, his column criticizing skateboarders generated responses to the paper.

McMullen said that he plans to continue writing for the paper.

“That’s just it. I don’t do more than one draft, and if he doesn’t like it the way it is, it won’t get printed. I hope the alternate viewpoints will tone mine down enough that it can be printed,” he said. “I have no intentions of editing it for content.”

http://www.sedaliademocrat.com/news/paper_3987___article.html/mcmullen_column.html

Smith-Cotton High School in Sedalia is probably a lot like where I grew up. I worked on my student paper, and there was an instance I remember where our editor had called the school out for allowing students caught drinking to remain in National Honors Society (because they were the school darlings), even though it is explicitly against the charter. The adviser never batted an eye about the issue, though it was controversial, and he had to work every day with the teachers and administrators who had protected those kids.

The issue of disparaging a certain group is slightly different, and something students and teachers are all too aware of after Columbine and Jena. We retain our first amendment rights to the point at which they defame or threaten someone else’s right to live as they see fit.

Times like this are actually great lessons for young journalists. You grow up and leave a school setting, but you will still be edited for content if you take on any divisive issues. Your editorial board will be taking their business relationships into account in their decisions. And it’s a bigger lesson about civic responsibility and responsibly exercising one’s rights.

It seems like Smith-Cotton had an opportunity for discussion and a broader education with this issue that they didn’t take, and when you pay for special programs it’s important that it’s really providing the experience it was intended to. Otherwise, it becomes just a fancy way to babysit. In order to keep valuable programs around and thriving we need to say: yes, these programs are fun and hands-on, but they are also the best way to prepare our students, and we’re utilizing them to the full extent.

We Make Choices Everyday, Why Should Education not be a Choice?

Imagine if every person had to use one bank or one grocery store chain. One would have very few choices about the types of services and products they use and receive. Fortunately, for all of us, this is not the case. We have choices about what type of checking and savings best suit us, and we can decide if we want to shop wholesale, organic, or at a super-chain. Even people living in rural Missouri can make these choices. It may not always be convenient to drive 45 miles to get to a health food store, but the option is still there.

We make choices everyday and people must live with those choices they make. Regrettably, the education our children receive from kindergarten through 12 is not always our choice. Some may afford the luxury of choice and go the private school route, while others cannot. Some children have it even harder when they suffer from some sort of disability. These children are in desperate need for education alternatives. The Department of Education attempts to give these children rights to an education. They should be guaranteed a free and appropriate education; however, this does not always happen. Parents should be able to make a choice for their children’s education, especially those with disabilities. These children face many obstacles within themselves everyday, they should at least be given the chance to get a decent education.

Rural Missouri Special Education Students Need Some Alternatives

My children seem to thrive in the schools available to them. Fortunately so, because there is only one option for each grade level; one elementary, one junior high school, and one high school. However, there are students in their classes that are not so lucky. In our small town, there are over 200 children with some sort of disability. Granted, not all of those children require special learning requirements, but some do. These students need the option of transferring to another school if ours cannot educate them properly. The ones stuck in our schools are going to constantly fall behind the rest of the children and may suffer form it the rest of their lives.

According to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), there are about 130,618 students in Missouri with some sort of disability. Again, not all of whom who need special education services. About 48,100 students have a specific learning disability, 11,629 are mentally retarded, and 4,534 students have autism. Many of these students require special education and it is not always available to them. These students may fall through the cracks and this will affect the rest of their lives. They should be given the chance at success too.

Jack Wenders, a School Choice Activist

Activists and school choice proponents believe in choice very strongly. Along with supporting the cause, many of them do extensive research on the issue and contribute financially. It is a serious issue, and I am grateful for the people that make it come to light.

School funding, school choice, and the monopoly on education were strong issue’s with the late Jack Wenders. He was highly interested in the downfalls of the bureaucracy of public schools and the monopolistic attitude in which they are ran. He felt parental choice and market incentives could solve some of these problems. Wenders passed away last November leaving millions to the Cato Institute. The Cato Insititute is a policy think tank in Washington D.C. It examines the ideas of limited government, individual liberty, free markets, and peace.

In an article Wenders wrote for The Cato Journal, he shows that 36 of the expenditures of public schools are wasted. This goes to show schools need to be more accountable for their expenditures and proves the schools do not need more money. He also published pieces in Cato’s Regulation. His legacy lives on in many ways, and we hope his research and support for parental choice and reforming education is makes a difference.

Hopefully, we can all learn from the lessons he was teaching us. We need to reform our education system. Our children need to be inspired, they need to learn, and they need to be taught properly. The time is now to change the education monopoly and make it something that actually works.

NCLB?

Submitted by Katie

The result of the "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) legislation is just more bureaucracy, plain and not so simple. The good intentions of the law signed in by both parties in 2002 have merely added another layer of red-tape in an already defunct and disparaging public education system. The law, instead of raising academic excellence as it was intended to do, has instead shifted the focus of educators to 'teaching to the test' rather than focussing on individual needs of individual schools and children. Truly what has happened is a lowering of academic standards, exclusion of minorities in testing groups, decrease in emphasis on history, science, geography and civics and increase in reading and math in order to claim that the law has been satisfied. Is this what America was seeking?

In an illuminating commentary Paul M. Weyrich, Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation, calls for an end to the "No Child Left Behind" agenda that President Bush intends to strengthen. He flat out calls for the end of NCLB in another commentary, "No Child Left Behind" Should Be Left Behind.

By handing over local control of our public education system to federal government, it's our families and kids who lose out. Individuals in local communities need to join forces and call upon thier local, state and federal representatives to step back and look at what has come from a HUGE bureaucracy that has lost sight of the rights of taxpayers to exercise choice and direction of their children's education.

What they are getting now are teachers who are forced to 'teach to the middle'. They are pressured to accept that you can't reach all kids, so you have to just shoot to the center and let go of those who cannot be raised by the standard curricula. Teachers are also pressured to advance children who are not ready BECAUSE of the NCLB law. This is exactly what the law was NOT intended to do!

Our public education system is a monopoly that, like any monopoly, serves itself and no other. This monopoly is run by powerful teachers unions, education bureaucrats and public school administrators working so hard at protecting their status quo that there is little hope of improving/reforming our public education. There are many great teachers out there who are not allowed to teach because they are forced to meet the criteria of the monopoly whose income is threatened when they fail to make the grade on nationally standardized tests.

America needs to completely reform our educational system with a multi-faceted solution--not a one-size-fits-all piece of legislation that traps teachers, parents and children in a defunct and failing school environment.

Missouri Education Rountable

I would like to comment on the recent request from the Missouri Education Roundtable, which contains teachers unions, to have no one running for office accept money from Rex Sinquefield. Rex started about 100 PACs recently, which legally can donate money to politicians without violating campaign contribution limits.

The Missouri Education Roundtable comment about Mr. Rex Sinquefield, saying that he should not be able to buy legislation. But the truth be told, many teachers unions give millions to support candidates who support their goals. I start to wonder if they only do not want people to accept this money because they are fearful Rex and others he attracts may be able to raise more money than them.

I hope politicians do take Rex's money and put it to good use!

THE TRIBUNE'S VIEW

School lawsuit
Time for Columbia to pull the plug

By HENRY J. WATERS III, Publisher, Columbia Daily Tribune
Published Wednesday, October 24, 2007

About half of Missouri's 524 public school districts sued the state for not
providing equitable or adequate funding. The Cole County Circuit Court twice
has denied their allegation, finding the state is under no such legal
obligation.

Judge Richard Carnahan's decision was reasonable, and besides, Columbia
Public Schools stood hardly any chance of improving its fiscal situation
even if the suit had been successful. The district already has spent more
than $80,000 in this quest. Statewide, plaintiff districts have spent more
than $3 million. If the larger group wants to appeal to the Missouri Supreme
Court, as its attorney urges, Columbia Public Schools should not join them.

The lawsuit never made sense. Even if you believe funding is inequitable and
inadequate, no remedy can be found in Missouri law, leaving courts no
legitimate role in telling the Missouri General Assembly what to do.

Except for the basic requirement the state spend 25 percent of its general
revenue on public schools, Judge Callahan found the Missouri Constitution
does not specify school funding. To hope the Supreme Court will overturn his
ruling is an idle exercise.

Even if Callahan had found school funding inequitable, Columbia would not
have gained. As one of the districts with above average per-pupil state
funding, a mandated move to level the playing field mathematically would
have reduced our share. Local officials had counted on an order to increase
the overall amount of funding in hopes the rising tide would mean even a
smaller share would give them more money.

Such an order concerning the adequacy of funding was the least likely of the
two unlikely legal requests, leaving precious little potential gain for the
Columbia district, as opined here several times in the past.

So now is the time for Columbia school officials to cut their costs and go
on to other pursuits. They - we - have spent enough in this futile quest.