Student journalists across Virginia are forming a new coalition to create protections for free speech in the classroom.
It's happened in Albemarle County and in Loudoun County, in Fairfax and in Alexandria – school administrators threatening to pull the plug on student journalism. Delegate Kirk McPike is a Democrat from Alexandria and a former student journalist who faced threats of censorship when he was in high school back in the 1990s. Now, he's working on legislation to create new protections.
"Part of being a student journalist and learning is actually writing the tough stories, actually having the hard interviews, actually doing the work of a journalist for your community," McPike says. "And we don't want administrators to teach student journalists that the first thing they have to do is ask permission from those in power about what they can and cannot write about."
That’s why he started working on legislation after being approached by James Libresco, who was editor of a high school newspaper facing the threat of censorship.
"We're not asking for much. We're just asking that any censorship, any administrator pulling the plug has a reason they believe it will cause substantial disruption to the school," Libresco says. "If it's not going to disrupt the school, if it's just going to embarrass the administration about some sort of silly policy that they put through or bring forward some hard questions from the community, that shouldn't be censored."
The coalition of student journalists working with McPike call the effort the New Voices Act, and they're hoping it'll be considered in the next session of the General Assembly.
