Policy On Underground Papers Clarified Proposal: Schools Control Distribution, Not Content, If Produced Off-Campus

Local high school students are free to publish underground newspapers and magazines, but must get permission before distributing them on campus.

The Coeur d’Alene School Board is revamping its policy on underground newspapers after a dispute last year with several Lake City and Coeur d’Alene high school students who published the underground magazine Institution-A-Lies.

During Monday’s board meeting, trustees said the new policy would clarify that school officials can’t censor or review any newspapers or magazines produced off-campus, but can put limits on how the publications are distributed.

Officials could also punish students if the distributed papers disrupt the educational process or are pervasively vulgar, harmful or defamatory.

Trustees should vote on the proposal Oct. 23.

Last spring Institution-A-Lies editors challenged a district policy that said school officials had “control over student expression” in any school publication, including those produced off-campus.

Students argued it’s unconstitutional for school districts to censor student publications produced off-campus. They also said the policy was aimed at advertisement fliers such as those distributed by Mr. Tux at prom time, and not underground student publications, said Chas Phillips, a 2000 Lake City High graduate and former IAL editor.

School officials agreed and that’s why the board is clarifying the policy.

“I think fighting for that right to publish whatever we want to is definitely worth it,” said Phillips, who is a freshman at the University of Redlands in California. He is currently starting a new underground magazine called Section 8 with his college roommate.

Phillips agreed that the district can control distribution of the underground newspapers, but worries the principal will just say no to these publications.

Lake City Principal John Brumley said Monday that’s not the case and the new IAL editors can distribute this year’s editions at lunch.

The students haven’t yet asked for permission, although Phillips thinks the first IAL issue is due out Oct. 17.

“Students have been really very responsible with the distribution and content,” Brumley said.

Trustees are changing the policy because they agreed the district rules didn’t specifically address underground publications.

“We just didn’t have anything in our policy that stated what the law was,” said Judy Drake, the district’s staff development coordinator.

Off-campus student publications have more First Amendment protec- tions than school-sponsored newspapers.

To help argue the IAL’s case, Phillips contacted the Student Press Law Center, a Virginia-based nonprofit group that provides legal assistance to high school and college journalists.

“The most recent appellate court decision on underground newspapers held that high school administrators have no general right to review and change an underground newspaper before it is distributed,” said a report on the group’s Web site.

Phillips said underground publications are important to spark open, uncensored discussion about school policies.

“It opens up space for alternative ideas to develop and bring solutions to our problems,” said Phillips.

Although school officials allowed IAL to publish six issues last semester, it wasn’t without a challenge.

Phillips said the editors’ graduation rights, including his, were threatened after an article in the fifth edition evaluated teacher performance and gave a Lake City economics teacher an F grade.

After several meetings with Brumley and Superintendent David Rawls, the situation was resolved and the students graduated and the final edition was handed out the last day of school.

Brumley said he never threatened graduation privileges or censored any student publication. But he said IAL’s teacher evaluation crossed the line.

“It went beyond the scope of what we agreed to, to not target individual students or staff,” he said.

Phillips said no such agreement was made, but that the situation was resolved.

As for the new policy, he would have preferred to see an open distribution policy.

“We went out on a limb,” Phillips said.