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The first online-only news site in state history to get media credentials to cover the state capitol and Seattle city hall, PubliCola has been called a “must-read” by the Seattle Post Intelligencer and a hot “New Media Mover and Shaker” by Seattle Magazine—which also cited our own Erica C. Barnett as the city's No. 1 news nerd.

Blogger Challenges Pending School Speech Rule

On Other Blogs   November 7, 2011 at 12:16 pm Josh Feit

December 1965, Mary Beth Tinker (13 years old) and John Tinker (15 years old)

Education blogger Melissa Westbrook has responded to the proposed changes to student newspaper policy at Seattle Schools (the pending rules would give the principal final say on what can go in student newspapers and mandate that “material must be free of content that runs counter to the instructional program”) with an online petition asking people to oppose the change, leaving current policy in place. The current policy states:

Students have the right to FREEDOM OF THE PRESS and may express their personal opinions in writing. They must take full responsibility for the content of their publications by identifying themselves as authors and or editors of the publication. They are not allowed to make personal attacks or publish libelous or obscene material.

The reference to “instructional program” in the new rule is a nod to 1988′s Hazelwood standard, a US Supreme Court ruling that said schools could censor based on “pedagogical” considerations. With that subjective element, the Hazelwood ruling gave school administrations more power to rein in student speech if they wanted.

The Reagan-era ruling overturned 1969′s landmark Tinker standard—a Vietnam-era US Supreme Court case that gave students more freedom by forcing administrators to meet a tougher standard. Tinker said administrators had to show that the speech in question actually disrupted the school day as opposed to simply challenging subjective “instructional programs.”

Fortunately, the Supreme Court sets a floor not a ceiling when it comes to free speech rights and states can go with the Tinker standard if they want. Legislators in Olympia have tried and failed to lock in the Tinker standard for Washington State.




  • http://www.twitter.com/joeszi Joe Szilagyi

    How much of this desired new crackdown is related to the possibility of students being critical of the total ineptitude of the school board in the wake of the recent scandals?

  • Jamesmi

    Holy Cow !!!!!!
    “must be free of content that runs counter to the instructional program”
    I must have fallen asleep. So the principle of freedom of speech is now; “Freedom Of Speech” in the context of Liberalism and public employee union policy only ? I wonder if there was a typo ? Did they mean, “programming” ?

    There was an aspect of editorial oversight that did not bother me. Student press bullying and publishing salacious junk just for the sake of “being a rebel” is probably reasonable. The libelous requirement sounds a bit strange. In the big world, the press seems to be very selective in being libelous. They have no constraints for some targets and paranoid constraints for others. How does a school expect to handle this ? Will each school have a staff attorney; aka “WA State Attorneys Full Employment Act” ? Hmmmm, this is starting to look like another leftist conspiracy to move the targets of patronage onto the public “dole” ….. :-)

    Well, enough fun. I need to put my jackboots on and ferret out some libelous content that runs counter to the instructional program ….. I’m laughing …. that sounds like a phrase out of the hayday of the China Red Guard. You remember, when they busted up bhuddist icons and shipped counter revolutionaries to the countryside for reprogramming ?
    Don’t ya gotta love a one party state ?
    See ya.
    J-sa

  • Melissa Westbrook

    Well, that was fast. 

    I am happy to announced that the district has put out a press release withdrawing this proposed changed to Board policy and will bring it back for discussion in 2012 with input from the community. 

    Also, Superintendent Enfield mentions in the press release that she was a former journalism teacher.  (How did this get past her then?)

  • http://www.twitter.com/joeszi Joe Szilagyi

    That’s so stupid. Why would they even bring it back?

  • westside

    Um, Josh…did you think about mentioning that Harium Martin-Morris, school board incumbent and current candidate against Michelle Buetow, has been a strong proponent of this policy in several public forums?

    That is the real news, and perhaps why the district changed their mind so quick.

  • Josh Feit

    Try the links in the post, and you’ll see that we give Harium Martin-Morris “credit” for the proposal.
    http://publicola.com/2011/11/04/at-the-latest-mcginn-reelection-fundraiser/

  • westside

    Is it too much to ask that you spend a sentence on this topic in this new post rather than making folks click through to a link?

  • Jamesmi

    need to wait until everyone forgets and stops paying attention – the normal political process in Peugot Sound

  • Pliggett Darcy

    Let’s get the law right here.  Hazelwood didn’t overturn Tinker.  Hazelwood just held that the rule outlined in Tinker didn’t govern the circumstances presented in Hazelwood.  Now, we can argue about how honest that holding is, how well it represents Tinker, whether it was a good decision; in my view, Hazelwood is a very bad decision indeed, and it’s in serious tension with Tinker.  But the fact — and the important fact for our purposes — is that Tinker is still good law.  It’s not like, say, Plessy v. Ferguson, the precedent that Brown v. Board overturned.  Courts rely on Tinker all the time.