A completely informal survey of my readers recently revealed that a significant minority of them are still in high school. This article is for you. Welcome to America, land of the censored. It doesn’t get much better when you’re an adult.

Hammer of Truth runs down the story of a school in Oak Ridge, Tenn., which last week traced down and pulled every copy of the student newspaper, The Oak Leaf, at Oak Ridge High School which ran two controversial articles about birth control and tattoos.

“The school administration should realize they don’t have the power to censor our paper,” Thomas said, while fellow students gathered around her living room late Wednesday afternoon to hand-paint T-shirts they plan to wear to school on Monday in protest.

“When they (the general population) see a pregnant girl, they say the girl should know better,” senior Samantha Senn said. “But in a lot of cases, they (the girls) don’t know anything.”

Other students said they think not allowing the paper to be distributed at school is “ridiculous.”

The article which explains birth control methods references a national survey, conducted in 2001, of high school students who were asked whether they were sexually active. Those national percentages were applied to ORHS students.

The article primarily covers birth control methods, quotes Dr. Charles Darling, an obstetrician/gynecologist in Oak Ridge, and tells students where they may obtain contraceptives — including a quote from Darling that says parental consent is not needed to obtain birth control.

According to the paper’s Editor-in-Chief, Brittany Thomas an article placed underneath the offending story, “advises students to practice abstinence until marriage.”

Oak Ridge High School Principal Becky Ervin ordered the search and seizure. . . .

In support of the censorship, Oak Ridge Schools Superintendent Tom Bailey said: “We have a responsibility to the public to do the right thing. We’ve got 14-year-olds that read the [student] newspaper.”

School officials also object to an article about tattoos and body piercings.

According to Superintendent Bailey, the newspaper will be reprinted with all of the offending material deleted. — Tennessee Independent Media Center

The paper was reprinted and distributed today, without the birth control article, and with revisions made to the article on tattoos. Perhaps they should have done what this next person did.

And Irregular Times reports on the Student Press Law Center, which covers issues of censorship in high school. It reported on Dwight Greer, assistant principal at Beachwood High School in Bradenton, Fla., who censored student Max Eden’s independent student paper, The Bison Blowhard.

Greer, who did not return multiple calls seeking comment for this story, told a local paper, The Sun Press, that due to the Blowhard’s content there was a likelihood for disruption.

But Greer had not seen a hard copy of the paper before he made his decision, Eden said. He only had an idea about its content after word circulated among the student body about what the paper was going to cover.

According to the Sun Press, articles in The Blowhard described the football team as arrogant, said the homecoming queen election was rigged and described a dehumanizing hazing assembly, among other topics. The paper did not use any names.

Eden said he told Greer he believed he was within his rights to distribute the paper under the 1969 Tinker v. Des Moines Supreme Court ruling. That ruling recognized that the First Amendment protects students’ free speech rights while at school.

Eden said Greer then told him that under Tinker, student speech can be censored if it is believed that the material will cause a substantial disruption.

Greer told Eden that “if you want to distribute it off school grounds then you have every right under your constitutional rights. But if you choose to distribute it on school grounds, you will be suspended, based on the likelihood that it will cause a disruption in the school,” according to The Sun Press article.

To avoid suspension, Eden said he passed out 50 or 60 copies of The Blowhard at a local mall. He said there has not been a real reaction from students to the paper, except for classmates commending him for writing about issues that needed to be written about. The local library is also distributing the paper, he said. — Student Press Law Center

Many high school students say that their school administrators are arbitrary, capricious and make poor decisions. And that’s putting it nicely. What’s going on in your high school that administrators don’t want you to know about?