Students have free speech rights, too. NY should protect them (Editorial Board Opinion) – syracuse.com

We renew our support for the Student Journalist Free Speech Act, a bill in the New York state Legislature that would protect young peoples right to express themselves in school-sponsored publications.

School administrators exercise great power over what students can say in school newspapers, yearbooks and online publications under guise of keeping order. That power can be misused to censor material that might embarrass the school, and to stifle free and open discussion of controversial issues affecting kids and their school communities.

This bill (A04402/S02958), sponsored by Assembly Member Donna Lupardo, D-Binghamton, and Sen. Brian Kavanagh, D-Brooklyn, gives student journalists the right to determine the content of school-sponsored media, in consultation with their teacher/advisers. It instructs administrators to keep their hands off unless student speech is libelous, an unwarranted invasion of privacy, incites students to violence or law-breaking, violates school policies, or disrupts orderly school operations.

In other words, casting the school in a poor light is not reason enough to censor student speech.

School censorship is real but it rarely breaks into public view. An exception happened locally earlier this year when a Tully High School administrator attempted to prevent publication of a students essay about being bullied because he is gay. The student, Tyler Johnson, broadcast the incident over social media, attracting a national audience. After a furor, the school relented and allowed Tylers essay to be published in a school newsletter.

Schools have great latitude to tell students how to behave while on school grounds (and sometimes even away from school). But as Justice Abe Fortas wrote in the landmark 1969 decision Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, students do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.

As school censorship controversies erupt around the nation, New York has an opportunity to join 15 other states in protecting student free speech through law. After years of dithering, the Legislature should get off the dime and pass this bill.

Editorials represent the collective opinion of the Advance Media New York editorial board. Our opinions are independent of news coverage. Read our mission statement. Members of the editorial board are Tim Kennedy, Trish LaMonte, Katrina Tulloch and Marie Morelli.

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Students have free speech rights, too. NY should protect them (Editorial Board Opinion) - syracuse.com