What do you get when you combine a beauty pageant winner, a pair of veteran high school teachers, and some supportive lawyers, politicians and journalists? You get a movement to try to bring into existence new legislation aimed at securing student journalists in New Jersey against censorship.
Katy Temple, the current editor in chief of The Torch, the newspaper at Bergen County College, won the Miss Liberty beauty pageant, and as part of her community service work, as she heads toward the Miss New Jersey competition, she has dedicated herself to promoting student press freedom.
Temple says, “I think for anyone, it takes a really long time to find your voice, and once you do find your voice, there is no fathomable reason why it should be taken away.”
Temple is working on an effort spearheaded by two veteran New Jersey high school journalism teachers, Tom McHale
The Tinker case set a precedent that protected public school students’ First Amendment rights for almost 20 years before the Supreme Court handed down a decision, in a case known as Hazelwood, that gave high school administrators much more latitude to determine content for student newspapers. As schools have grown increasingly image-conscious, cases of direct censorship have increased nationwide, and New Jersey is no different.
Tom McHale, an English and Journalism teacher at Hunterdon Central High School, and a member of the Garden State Scholastic Press Association (GSSPA) board, says, “We saw it as a need in New Jersey. There had been a couple of high profile censorship issues that had lead to dismissals by chief advisors of schools.”
McHale himself resigned his position as media adviser at Hunterdon after a new administration began to enforce a board policy that called for the administration to read and approve everything before publication, a process known as “prior review,” in 2014-2015.
McHale and his students lobbied to get the policy changed but without success.
“I couldn’t change the policy. I mean these policies [at other public schools] are the same policies that my school had. They are very very common throughout New Jersey.” McHale says. It was at this point that he started looking into how he might better be able to protect his student journalists from undue censorship and met up with fellow GSSPA board member John Tagliarini.
Tagliareni says, “The [New Voices] legislation is important because it would set very important limitations, also the rights of students journalists, basically bringing it back to how the Tinker decision was a number of years ago…”
The bill that McHale and Tagliarini helped craft reads, in part, “A student journalist has the right to exercise freedom of speech and of the press in school-sponsored media,” this is regardless of how that student journalists newspaper is funded or if the article was written within a class. The bill also protects advisors from being suspended, fired or otherwise dismissed due to an article their students wrote.
The bill’s supporters are quick to point out that it does not give students rights that exceed what was common for decades, nor does it promote student press to the same level as mainstream media.
Lawyer Frank LoMonte, the former director of the Student Press Law Center says New Jersey is a state that has a demonstrable need for the legislation.
“One of the very first workshops I taught, was a workshop for New Jersey high school editors. It was about 60 people from around New Jersey down in Washington DC, and I asked this room, ‘how many of you have been told not publish something just because it would make your school look bad?’ And easily 50 out of the 60 people raised their hand. And then I say, ‘Of the people whose hands are raised, how many people called the Student Press Law Center, or called the ACLU, or called your local TV station and complained?’ and every single hand went down.” LoMonte said in a phone interview.
When Tagliarini and McHale first started reaching out to state lawmakers in 2016, they received bipartisan support for the legislation. Assemblyman Troy Singleton (D) and Assemblywoman Gail Phoebus (R) introduced the bill in the Assembly and Senator Diane Allen (R), Senator Nia Gill (D) introduced the matching bill in the Senate along with support from Senator Jennifer Beck (R).
But then the legislation sat there for two years and became a casualty to New Jersey’s legislative time-table and a host of other setbacks. For example, Assemblywoman Donna Simon (R) reinitiated the legislation, but in November of 2018, she lost her reelection bid, forcing the New Voices advocates to start the hunt for bill sponsorship over again.
Tagliarini and McHale did not give up. Senators Nia Gill (D) and Shirley Turner (D) are sponsors of the current New Voices bill S1176, and others have signed on as cosponsors, making it a bipartisan effort.
Katy Temple says, “The biggest issue right now is we need to get it on the agenda. If that includes lobbying, writing letters, and social media campaigns, then that is kind of what my focus is right now.”
McHale says, “We have a limited amount of time. You have to get [the bill] first heard in the Senate, then that will help it get heard in the assembly committee, education committee, and eventually, get to a floor vote, and then [if it passes] it’s on the governor’s desk.”
Aine Pipe, a junior at Cherry Hill East High School who is also a student reporter and the president of the student chapter of Garden State Scholastic Press Association, says, “New Voices is essential to our mission. We need the protection to do our jobs, to tell the stories that need to be told.”
