They Put WHAT On the Front Page?
Grover Cleveland High School in Reseda became a First Amendment battleground recently after the student newspaper placed a textbook drawing of a human vagina at the top of the front page. The 15-year-old editor said the action was inspired by the play, "The Vagina Monologues." The principal termed it disruptive and had copies of the paper rounded up and impounded. The Los Angeles Times covered the controversy. But according to some Mass Comm 101 students the real controversy is over the principal's actions, not the editor's.
posted by Mike Eberts (AKA Your Humble Blogger) @ 9:18 PM
2 Comments:
This reminds me of the controversy that ensued when El Vaquero published a story in a 2006 issue on the rising rate of suicide among college students.
The controversy was over then-Superintendent John A. Davitt's actions ordering college janitors to dispose of the issues because of a supposed link the paper had made between students committing suicide and being a nursing student.
In the story, Olga Ramaz writes of the heavy workload some students must endure to get through their semester of classes and how this, among other things, could lead to suicide. What set it all off was this tiny paragraph midway through the story: “Raya Belcheva, a 22-year-old nursing student, died in November last year. She was in her last semester in the nursing program and took her own life a few weeks before her would-be graduation.” The issue was compounded further by the fact that an illustration of a nurse in full uniform was the story’s accompanying art piece. However, nowhere in the story does Ramaz make a connection between the challenges of taking a nursing class and committing suicide.
The story was met with mostly positive reviews from students who were surprised at the statistics Ramaz reported in her piece. Most of the complaints came from faculty on campus, including the nursing department head.
People tend to make their own conclusions, sometimes to the detriment of the publication and author.
This issue went away after a while, and only after Davitt came forward and admitted he had ordered issues destroyed and made a formal apology.
Olga Ramaz did NOT write that article, Marie Pauline Guiuan did. Olga Ramaz wrote the article where Davitt admitted ordering the removal of the papers.
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