Protecting the Protectors
By Jesse Singal - Jan 13th, 2009 at 11:26 amThis Los Angeles Times column on student journalism is worth checking out. Most notable is a new state law that “prohibits administrators from retaliating against advisors who try to protect student press freedom.”
Apparently, this is a lonstanding problem in California:
Accounts of such puny, punitive actions are legion.
Administrators at South East High School in South Gate booted journalism advisor Darryl Adams a couple of years ago after he supported a student whose editorial contended that random drugs and weapons searches were conducted unevenly.
The bosses at Rialto High School told Rick Whited his student journalists were “too negative,” pushing him out as advisor even after he offered the creative compromise of teaching a separate class in public relations.
Janet Ewell’s crime at Rancho Alamitos High School in Garden Grove? Letting her students write about filthy bathrooms, bad cafeteria food and teachers who did not make enough time to help students. She got the boot in 2002.
Those are some bad, bad administrators.
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