Monthly Archives: October 2014

PISCATAWAY The decision to pull an article from the Northern Highlands Regional High School newspaper was used to highlight a growing trend of censorship Monday at a gathering of student journalists from across the state.

The keynote event, "Press Rights, No Fear," at the Garden State Scholastic Press Association's 35th annual Fall Press Day on Rutgers University's Busch Campus included two student panelists for the first time.

"We're putting them out in center for you because of the work that they did in terms of fighting for their rights when their articles were censored at their schools," said John Tagliareni, the moderator and a retired adviser for Bergenfield High School's student paper.

Student press censorship is a growing problem, experts say.

"Where we had gone for years with getting very few calls, in the past year and a half we've had several significant incidences some in which the advisers were either ousted or forced to resign in order to not compromise their principles," said Susan Everett, treasurer for the scholastic press group.

Among them was the censorship of an article by Adelina Colaku, the former editor of the Highland Fling at Northern Highlands.

Colaku, one of the two student panelists, spoke about her three-month legal battle with the administration to get published a story detailing a rift within the administration. A revised version of her story was eventually published.

"When you think of authority figures who are meant to be responsible and reinforce the rights that you have students don't expect that they would violate them," said Colaku, who now attends Bard College. "So I think many students are shocked to hear this and I'm glad I can bring it to light and hopefully they can do something as well if this is occurring in their school system."

The other student panelist, Kylie Sposato, now a freshman at Rowan University, wrote a column at Pemberton Township High School lamenting smoking in the girls' bathroom.

After several meetings with the principal and superintendent, a revised version of her story was published.

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Censorship and rights at summit

Asbury Park Press 11:25 a.m. EDT October 28, 2014

Protestors attend the Metropolitan Operas season opening on Sept. 22 to protest the Mets decision to premiere the controversial opera Death of Klinghoffer. (Photo: AP )

NEW YORK It is a tale of two cities. Well, one ultraliberal metropolis of 8.4 million, and one teeny, conservative town of 3,340. But both face the same threat: dangerous art.

Here in New York, the threat is a world-renowned opera companys production about terrorism. In Maiden, N.C., the threat is a high school play about love.

Almost, Maine has enjoyed nearly 2,000 school productions since its premiere in 2004. It is, in fact, currently the most frequently produced full-length play in U.S. high schools, edging out even A Midsummer Nights Dream. Set in a fictional town in remotest Maine, the whimsical rom-com features nine interlocking vignettes of romance and heartache, playing on familiar idioms about love. The figurative act of falling in love, for example, is illustrated by actors literally falling down. Its a bit like a better-written, slightly surrealist version of Love Actually.

High school students around the country, including those in Maiden High Schools theater club, are drawn to an appealing combination of slapstick, wit and wholesome schmaltz. School administrators likewise appreciate that the most explicit dialogue in John Carianis PG-rated script is the minced oath Jeezum Crow. Who could object to that? The community leaders of Maiden, it turns out to one vignette in particular.

Remember that scene with the falling-down gag? Theres no sex, or kissing, or even allusions to lust. But the gravity-prone characters are both men, which was incendiary enough to lead the principal to cancel the production, citing sexually explicit overtones and multiple sexual innuendoes.

Suspecting that the gay storyline might be an issue, the students had asked the principal to OK their play choice several weeks earlier. After consulting with the superintendent, he did, on the condition that parents sign permission slips allowing their kids to audition for a play with homosexual characters. Then, after the 16-year-old student-director started rehearsals, word got out to local churches that the show contained gay people. Just a few days after same-sex marriage became legal in the state, the students were told the community isnt ready for this play after all.

They were distraught. Theyd already broken their budget securing the rights, and they worried about the message the principals decision sent to their openly gay classmates. The American Civil Liberties Union offered to help the group fight the decision as happened in 2011, during a similar battle at a Maryland school but the students declined legal help, not wanting to cause more conflict. They still hoped to produce the play, though, so when a former teacher offered to help mount an off-campus production, they agreed. Their Kickstarter page set a goal of $1,000. Less than a week later, they had already raised six times that amount.

Many of the donations, and accompanying petition signatures, have come from sympathizers far from Maiden. On social media and in national news reports, far-flung supporters of the students accuse the town of bigotry, backwardness and intellectual suppression.

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RAMPELL: Censorship alive and well in Maine and NYC