Hazelwood East High School Spectrum Case Study

On May 13, 1983 principal Robert Reynolds was handed a copy of Hazelwood East High School’s newspaper, Spectrum. After reading through it he decided two of the articles were inappropriate, one on teenage pregnancy, the other on divorce’s effect on children (which was biased against the father) and removed them from the newspaper. The student writers and editors, which included, Cathy Kuhlmeier, Leslie Smart, and Leanne Tippett were furious and filed suit in a local court claiming their First Amendment rights had been violated. After defeat in local court, the students took the case to federal court and won. Then, the school district applied for certiorari to the supreme court. The school district was granted certiorari in January 1987 and argued …show more content…
For example, if the school district was “unable to exercise control over the topics addressed in the student newspaper, it would effectively lose control over the curriculum and make the maintenance of journalism courses impractical" (Leiter). If the school couldn’t monitor what was said in the newspaper they wouldn’t be able to teach their curriculum correctly. This would be a waste of school funds to maintain the newspaper and would cause people to associate bad things with the school. Also, "Principles of good journalism said the students should have given the father a chance to tell his side of the story on divorce” (Brannen). If the principal hadn’t deleted that article then the school would look bad for not having taught their students properly and would cause the paper to be shut down, so the principal obviously does the choice that benefits the school.
In conclusion, the principal and the school district were correct for removing the articles from the paper. If a school sponsored newspaper or other content is inappropriate be sure to contact the school administers about it. This case has been referred back to multiple times in other court cases and it still affects decisions