Hazelwood School District Vs. Kuleimer - 1120 Words

Hazelwood School District vs. Kuleimer In May of 1983, some students in the journalism class at hazel wood high school in Missouri, made the final edition of the school newspaper. They then gave the newspaper to the adviser, Howard Emerson, who wa a newbie. He gave the principal the final review of the paper before it was published. When the principal, Reynolds, reviewed the paper, there were 2 articles that he didn’t like. The first article was about teen pregnancy, including some comments from students that were pregnant at the school. Names weren’t given, but Reynolds thought there was too much information on the topic and he was concerned about the privacy of the students. So he took that article out. The second article was about divorce, and this one included a lot of personal stuff. Reynolds was not happy about what the students said about their families. One student said a lot of revealing things about their dad, and the dad hadn’t been given a chance to e xplain himself. He also didn’t want 9th graders to be reading about sex and birth control, which were in both articles. Reynolds took out the second article also, and published the rest of the paper. The students spent a lot of time on the newspaper and were upset at the principal for taking the two articles out. They felt that censorship was a violation of their first amendment rights and they took the case to court. The Court disagreed with the students and said that if the school had a good reason to censor