Interesting article in the Cincy Enquirer over the weekend. The article reports on an incident that came down a few weeks before Christmas break at the old high school. Our school newspaper (avoid their website's opening page like the plague - or at least turn your sound down before you check it) printed an article that raised a few hackles and was pulled from the issue (the page with the article was physically ripped out of two thousand or so copies) before the issue was distributed to our students.The article was an opinion article written by the young man shown on the right of this blog post - a student of mine - and was critical of our football team - particularly of some of the coaching decisions made in this year's fall campaign. The article - which I will admit to having read (according to the Enquirer article, it's available on Facebook and MySpace) - began factually enough, citing the far-from-spectacular record of the football team in the past few years, and continued to question some of the offensive choices made by the coaching staff this year.
According to the Enquirer article, the article was pulled at the decision of our principal (likely after consultation with central office staffers) because - and I'm being careful to quote the Enquirer article here...
The article included some highly critical passages, such as, "It's hard to watch them play. It looks like a flag football game except that they still can't score .... The once mighty powerhouse of the city is now the doormat."While I can certainly agree with the final statement - that many staff noses were out of joint regarding the pulling of the article - I find the rest of the statement interesting. While our principal declined to comment for the Enquirer article, the superintendent's clearly carefully chosen words suggest that the article would have damaged morale and put one student in line for "some serious ridicule potentially".
Mackey said the article would have damaged morale, because it is one student or group of students criticizing another group.
We "felt the kid was putting himself out there for some serious ridicule potentially," Mackey said.
"You're dealing with a very large football squad, not in stature but in numbers. You've got one kid putting his neck out there. It may not be in his best interest to have that article. This is not a threat, but it creates an attitude and a situation between kids. You'd have a lot of staff noses out of joint as well."
I do see the possibility that the article could have been divisive - and I know that at least one staff member suggested in private that the article might have been stronger if a corresponding article had been printed in which the opposing viewpoint - that the football team is improving and is helping a number of our students to become better young men. But I certainly hadn't considerd the option that the withdrawl (it's tough to keep trying to find different ways to say that the article was pulled without saying it was censored - because of the pejorative connotation that word brings) could have been to protect the writer of the article.
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My closing thoughts about the issue...
- I was impressed with how even-handed and obviously (to me, at least) well thought out all of the statements in the Enquirer article were. Clearly, Ruth and Achilles, Mr. Mackey and the Paynes, took time before offering their statements to the Enquirer reporter - likely a very wise choice.
- Odin's Word has become a much more impressive, challenging publication under its current advisor. It is not a publication without room for improvement ,but I have been rather impressed with the totality of what is being put out each month.
- I have, personally, been very leery of commenting in this forum in regards to this issue and am, in fact, still being very careful to choose my words. This blog is a piece of my personal work, but I have chosen, also, to link it from my school webpages. This is a choice that I have made for numerous reasons - foremost among them that I enjoy being able to provide a more personal side of myself to my students who choose to look for it. I am not foolish enough, however, to believe that what I write here can be written fully and totally without consequences. I make sure to post only things that I feel will not endanger my employement at Princeton High Shcool (if you haven't gotten the impression that I enjoy working at Princeton a whole heck of a lot, you haven't been paying attention), and I attempt to offer my opinions on controversial issues only while providing some semblance of balance. These choices are, admittedly, made knowing that making other choices could have consequences related to that employement.
As I close this post, I wonder if all of that doesn't sum up the entire issue related to the censorship of this student article. You and I and the Odin's Word staffers are free to say or write anything that we want. Our country is founded on such an ideal. It is one of our freedoms that is most near and dear to my heart and to our continued survival at a free people. That freedom, however, does not mean that our speech is without consequences. Just as I choose my words carefully because I know that offering my fully unvarnished opinion on some issues could result in the loss of my job, the Odin's Word staffers are learning that their exercise of freedom of speech (and, in their case, of the press) is not without consequences. That our actions have consequences is one of the hardest lessons for people (I almost wrote young people but thought better because I know of adults who have not entirely learned such a lesson) to learn as well as one of the most important. - If the publication and subsequent deletion of the article does nothing else, it opens the debate over our freedoms and their consequences for our students, staff, and community members. There is certainly value in that, because we must constantly evaluate and defend our freedoms if we are to value and keep them.
