High School Newspaper Editor, Adviser Suspended for Refusing to Print a Particular Word

Back when I was a high school
journalist, we all got in trouble for the things we put in
the newspaper, like all good nerdy, opinionated teens are obligated
to do. But over at Neshaminy High School in
Langhorne, Pennsylvania, the editor of the school newspaper has
been suspended from her role for a month and the newspaper’s
faculty adviser was suspended for two days, all because of what the
newspaper decided to leave out.

Now is the point where we explain that Neshaminy High School’s
mascot is the Redskin. The student
editors of the newspaper have decided to stop using the word,
largely understood to be a racial slur. The Student Press Law
Center provides
more information:

Robert Copeland, the superintendent of Neshaminy School
District, suspended adviser Tara Huber on Tuesday and Wednesday,
said Maddy Buffardi, the newspaper’s opinion editor. Huber, who won
the Pennsylvania School Press Association’s Journalism Teacher of
the Year award this year, is an English teacher and adviser to the
student newspaper at Neshaminy High School in Langhorne.

Huber’s suspension relates to the student editors’ effort last
school year to remove the word “Redskins” from their newspaper. For
The Playwickian’s June issue, a student had submitted a letter to
the editor that used the word “Redskins” — the school’s mascot —
several times. The staff replaced all but the first letter with
dashes, following The Associated Press style for slurs. In his
prior review of the issue, Principal Ron McGee told the students to
print the word in full or not print the paper at all.

While student editors discussed what to do about the issue,
Huber left the classroom.

“We all decided unanimously that we’re going to send the paper
to print the way that we feel comfortable sending the paper to
print,” Buffardi said.

To be clear, they suspended the adviser without pay for
this. Apparently leaving the classroom to let the editors decide
what to do constituted “neglecting her duties.”

Apparently this conflict has been going on for a little while.
An attorney with the Student Press Law Center took a dim view of
the case in an interview with media site
Poynter:

The school board’s policy that prevents editors from removing
“redskins” in submissions to the newspaper could open up the
district to legal action because it imposes an unconstitutional
restriction on the students editors’ free speech, Adam Goldstein,
an attorney for the Student Press Law Center, told Poynter. This
rule is particularly egregious, Goldstein said, because it purports
to force students to adopt a certain kind of speech. Because of
this, Goldstein does not think it can survive legal challenge.

“It may be possible to get dumber people on a school board, but
I don’t how you go about it,” Goldstein said.