McClatchy High School is censoring the student newspaper, trampling on free speech | Opinion

Students at C.K. McClatchy High School in Sacramento are getting a crash course in the First Amendment, while school administrators are hopefully learning a lesson of their own: Don’t censor journalists.

Opinion

Last week, the student paper published a series of comments from students, including one praising Adolf Hitler. Then, administrators at Sacramento City Unified School District decided to violate student’s rights.

Now, the student journalists are learning firsthand the importance of the First Amendment — and all this is happening at a high school named for a long-ago editor of The Sacramento Bee.

The comments appeared in the spring edition of the student newspaper, The Prospector, published two weeks ago. In a feature titled “What did you say?” promising to reveal “some of the weirdest stuff” overheard on campus, a student reported overhearing a classmate say: “Hitler’s got some good ideas.” The comment happened in a government class and was overheard by one of the student editors of The Prospector, the newspaper’s faculty adviser Samantha Archuleta said.

The student who made the comment is well-known among students and staff for making these types of remarks, she said, and the students involved in writing and editing the feature included it as an example of the atmosphere in the school right now, as the world grapples with the war in Gaza.

“(The students) wanted to use a variety (of quotes) to show how varied the climate is on our campus from minute to minute,” Archuleta said. “One moment they hear a harmless, funny, off-kilter statement, and in the same day they hear horrible things, like the Hitler quote.”

Journalism teacher has been suspended

Archuleta was informed Tuesday evening that she was placed on administrative leave from the high school. She was made to relinquish her keys on Wednesday morning and told to have no further contact with her students or the school until the administration has made its decision.

The allegations leveled against her include “expressing insensitive comments toward students and staff, sharing confidential student information, failure to maintain a harassment-free class and environment” and “a lack of good judgment in the execution of professional duties.”

“That’s absurd,” said David Loy, legal director at the First Amendment Coalition, when I told him about Archuleta’s suspension. “Education Code 48907 specifically prohibits retaliation against journalism advisors as well as students, and there is no credible way in which simply publishing a remark about Hitler constitutes harassment.”

California Education Code 48907 protects the right of student newspapers to publish anything they want, as long as the content isn’t explicitly obscene, libelous or slanderous and doesn’t incite students to violate any laws or school regulations.

“It’s controversial, but that’s what free speech is,” Loy said of the student’s passing comment about Hitler. “It is not harassment to simply publish newsworthy information that a student journalist overheard someone say.”

There is no world in which a newspaper or its editors should be punished for accurately reporting a newsworthy event, and student journalists are included in those legal protections under both the Education Code and the First Amendment.

The student journalists and their instructor know the identity of the student who made Hitler comment and are confident that the comment was made. The purpose of its inclusion was not tacit approval, it was to provide a glimpse of McClatchy’s all-too-real campus culture.

Instead of engaging the students and newspaper staff about a culture where these remarks are made without interference by teachers, McClatchy Principal Andrea Egan acted like an autocrat. She shut down dialogue and obliterated any chance for a “teaching moment” with her heavy-handed tactics.

Egan stepped all over the First Amendment and demonized news gathering, student journalists and their instructor, who did nothing wrong. The fault here is with Egan, and this is a fight the Sacramento Unified School District will — and should — lose.

“Newspapers report on all kinds of things that are potentially dramatic,” Loy said. “That is the function of the press: To publish things that are of public concern. There is a student that said this and it is newsworthy information about the climate that exists in the school. I think they should be commended for publishing the news as they see it.”

Seeking comment, I exchanged emails with a Sacramento City Unified spokesman and left messages that have gone unanswered.

Student media outlets across the nation have been at the forefront of good journalism in the past several weeks, as campus protests have become international news. The student journalists at Columbia University heroically continued to report the news as their campus was stormed by New York City police officers seeking to dismantle the school’s pro-Palestine encampment there. The State Hornet at Sacramento State broke the news that school administrators there had agreed to refrain from investing in any corporations “that profit from genocide, ethnic cleansing and activities that violate fundamental human rights.”

Student journalists are journalists, and they are protected as such.

One face to students, another to parents

“It’s been a week from hell,” Archuleta wrote to me in an email.

“When Principal Egan came to my class to discuss this, she brought donuts, told them she was proud that they are continuing a great legacy and that she agreed with me, their adviser, that they should be able to write and print what they want,” Archuleta wrote. “(Egan) then said that she hoped, though, that they will be more sensitive and thoughtful about the choices they make so that their words don’t cause harm.”

After Egan left the journalism class that day, Archuleta’s students were confused.

“Some of my student reporters … asked if they were expected only to report things that make our school’s image good,” Archuleta said. “Some kids also discussed whether it is more important to hide ugly things that happen on campus due to the political climate or expose the issues at our school.”

In a subsequent autodial message to parents, Egan said her “primary goal was and is to ensure that our campus is a safe and welcoming community for all students while navigating the complicated free speech issues associated with student publications.”

“I promptly met with the journalism students early the next day to discuss my concerns, and shared with them the importance of exercising good judgment in their editorial decision-making,” Egan said in the call. “Words have the power to cause harm.”

Unfortunately, some of the worst vitriol directed at the students on The Prospector has come from teachers and administrators at the school. Archuleta had to turn off the public comments on the student paper’s Instagram account after one teacher began arguing with student journalists in the comment threads.

“I got an email from a parent saying that I should not be around children, that I shouldn’t be a teacher, that I am causing harm to the community and he will not be satisfied with just the sending of this letter,” Archuleta said. “He was essentially saying he was going to do more to get me punished for it.”

Someone else told Archuleta that Joan Didion — a former student editor of The Prospector — was “rolling in her grave.”

Neither Archuleta nor her students endorse the comment they reported, but they are being treated by their employers, administrators and community as though they did.

Ultimately, the only lesson these students should take away from this ordeal is that they did nothing wrong, and they have every right to report and publish what people say on campus. News is news.

To the students at C.K. McClatchy High School’s journalism class, from one journalist to another: If the people in charge are mad at you, you’re doing something right. Joan Didion would be extremely proud of you, and so am I.