Opinions

What you hold in your hands right now is the product of a free press. Uncensored, unpreviewed, a result of journalism for students and by students—a rare breed to which fewer and fewer high schools are exposed.

While the majority in our school were recovering from an exhilarating SING! weekend, 102 “free-spirited” student journalists gathered in the nation’s capital to celebrate free press as part of the Al Neuharth Free Spirit Journalism Scholars program.

As the female Free Spirit Scholar from New York, I had no expectations for the trip. I had just turned over The Spectator to the new executive editors, retiring as the Managing Editor. I had gained much of my experience in journalism by reporting, writing, editing, managing the paper and doing it all over again week after week. I felt that I had seen it all: the struggle between restricting student freedoms and maintaining the necessary free press to cover the injustice; the unwillingness of sources to speak to a paper that was trying to seek the truth; The Spectator’s battle to prove its worth to the very people who believe the school could do without it.

But I shouldn’t have been so sure of myself. That week remains an experience I will never forget. As the free spirits toured the offices of USA Today and the Newseum (a news museum), met several journalists and listened at workshops and to each other, we all learned a little bit more about the state of journalism today as well as the potential danger it’s in.

Some of the words of the people we met resonated deep inside me. Though The Spectator is relatively autonomous compared to most high school publications across the nation, it has had its share of run-ins with the administration. Journalist Betty Bayé reminded me why I dedicated so much to preserving The Spectator’s power: “You won’t win all the time, but people have to know you will fight,” she said.

I won’t forget First Amendment Center legal analyst Charles Haynes’s words either: “Denying people a meaningful voice in the life of their schools does not make a school safer or better,” he said. “Don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t have any rights.” Those sentiments seemed to sum up my feelings about new school policies that disregard the rights of students—after all, according to Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), students’ constitutional rights are not shed at the schoolhouse gate.

I soon found that The Spectator’s problems were not unique. Among the free spirit scholars, there were freelancers, photojournalists, documentary makers, newsmagazine editors, bloggers and much more. There were students who ran a paper despite a lack of support from faculty advisors and administrators. Some had to have their work reviewed by the principal before they could publish it. Despite the differences, there were common recurring problems: how to get more people to read the paper, how to get administrators to stop censoring or imposing themselves upon student publications, and how to build up the staff so more staff members would write, not just editors. 

In a world that increasingly champions democracy, the state of a nation’s press is often a good reflection of the freedom within a state’s borders. Yet, this sense of free spirit and free press is lacking in many institutions of learning—supposedly, the models for the “real world” students will soon enter. If adults do not tolerate repression of their speech, there is no reason for students or student journalists to put up with the same restrictions.

I will never know whether the conference was a plug for a career in journalism or a genuine effort to expose today’s youth to the movers and shakers in the business. But I do know journalism isn’t relevant just to the journalist or the lawyer who defends press rights. Free speech is something we should all be worried about—especially if we don’t have as much of it as we used to. A large portion of the countries around the world either repress this right or allow only partial freedom. I might not have gauged what a free spirit was before the conference, but I certainly now know what a free spirit does in any situation. Nobody goes out to change the world. But we have enough ammunition to keep us dreaming, daring and doing.