The recent uproar over a Colorado Springs-area high school newspaper editorial board’s presidential endorsement represents a remarkable and highly worrisome glimpse into the current state of the national debate — and reveals an embarrassingly poor grasp of Colorado’s rights to free expression.
Student journalists at Palmer Ridge High School in Monument should have been commended for trying to take on the complex process of such an endorsement. Big decisions like this one aren’t common at the high school level, and the Palmer Ridge students were courageous to take it on.
Instead, many parents and others called for the students to be suspended or otherwise disciplined. Complaints were lodged against the student’s faculty adviser. Dire warnings of student indoctrination and improper government-sponsored interference flooded social media sites and the e-mail inboxes of the student paper, The Bear Truth.
The sin? An endorsement of Hillary Clinton published in the highly conservative enclave that is El Paso County. But the editorial selection and its clash with prevailing ideology likely could have happened elsewhere. Had students in Boulder endorsed Donald Trump, we’re sure a similar outcry would have resounded.
Offended adults should rethink their angst. While they’re free to disagree with the endorsement, the kids acted responsibly. Just as high school sports prepare students for bigger leagues, student-run newspapers are an important training ground for the next generation of journalists.
The Bear Truth’s student co-editors-in-chief, Evan Ochsner and Anna Schnelbach, tell us they acted of their own volition without preconceived notions and minus faculty interference or improper guidance. The nine-member board debated and took various positions, but went with the plurality — even though they knew that doing so would likely subject them to criticism.
Colorado law has long allowed student-run newspapers to express editorial positions in much the same way mainstream newspapers like The Denver Post or The Gazette in nearby Colorado Springs do everyday.
Faculty adviser Tom Patrick is a well-regarded expert in student papers. He is correctly following the 1990 Colorado Student Free Expression Law and its tough-minded provisions — which freedom lovers should be proud exist in our state and only eight others. Many other states allow school administrators to meddle with or even censor student publications.
Ochsner, Schnelbach and their peers should be commended for their courage and maturity, as well as for their finely executed editorial process and product. Future newsrooms would be proud to have them.
And the school’s administration and district officials should be praised for supporting their students during the misplaced overreaction. Too many times anymore, the fear of social-media shaming causes lesser mortals to follow the will of the mob.
The bottom line here is that the students did the hard work of researching the candidates. They carefully and substantively argued their position in a well-written and admirably thought-through editorial. Their adult critics should have responded in kind.
We’re with The Bear Truth. And we thank them for the lesson they just offered us all.
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