Principal shuts down student newspaper

A Redding, Calif. principal has shut down the high school newspaper for the upcoming school year after publication of a flag-burning photo.


The following article is from the Redding Record Searchlight:
By Rob Rogers Tuesday, June 10, 2008 
The adviser calls it sabotage, the principal finds it embarrassing and the superintendent is offended. The students see it all as a matter of freedom of speech.


Shasta High published its last issue of the Volcano, the student newspaper, before the end of classes last week with an image on the front page of a student burning the American flag and an editorial inside defending the practice. 


"The paper's done," said Milan Woollard, Shasta High principal. "There is not going to be a school newspaper next year." Shasta had been looking at cutting the paper already -- funds are tight as the school anticipates receiving fewer state dollars from Sacramento this fall, Woollard said. 


"This cements that decision," he said. Judy Champagne, the Volcano's faculty adviser, is upset that some of the students decided to use the newspaper as a platform to engender controversy during the last week of school. Planned for the paper was coverage of Shasta's prom and announcements of scholarship recipients and other news. 


Those items made the paper, she said. The editorial and image of flag burning were added at the last minute. "I think that the students were sabotaging what should have been a positive last issue," shesaid. "I think it's very sad that we're not going to have a paper." 


Upsetting to Champagne, who's been the newspaper's adviser for years, is what she called a lack of news judgment from some of the students on staff. While flag burning may be a salient national issue, nothing has happened in the north state to make it a current, local issue. Until now. "I thought it was bad journalism," she said. 


The editorial, written by Connor Kennedy, who graduated Friday, explained that a person has the right to burn the flag, that it's protected speech under the first amendment. Kennedy did not return a phone call made to his home Monday. Administrators at the school and district level said students have a right to run the photo and print the editorial under the same right. But all of them called it poor judgment. 


"I think that they misused it (their freedom of speech)," Champagne said. "I think this was a game for them." Mike Stuart, Shasta Union High School superintendent -- a U.S. Army veteran and paratrooper -- said just because the students have a right to defend and run the image doesn't mean the administration has to approve of it.  


"Personally I find it offensive," he said. "Especially the last newspaper of the year. It's like a parting shot." Stuart said it showed the students' immaturity. "I think it was especially self-indulgent," he said. "I don't like it at all."


Kennedy, who won an award from the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution earlier this year for an essay he wrote, was president of Shasta's student union and helped organize a demonstration on campus last fall to protest the high school's decision to combine its junior and senior prom and the vote that led to the decision. 


He and other students successfully argued the matter in front of the school board and forced Shasta administrators to hold a campuswide revote on the issue. Woollard said he believes Kennedy and other students placed the photo and editorial in the paper simply to get a reaction. And it's what they've got, he said. "I'm just embarrassed that the thing was ever done," he said.


1. Using examples from the article, tell why the flag burning article was so controversial.


2. Was the principal right in his decision to close down the student newspaper?