On March 31, 2022 a small high school newspaper in Grand Island, NE was shut down by the administration for retaliating against what can only be described as a blatant act of hate against the LGBTQ community.

After being told by administration that the writers were to publish articles under their birth names, the staff at Northwest High School, at least three of which were transgender, dedicated their final issue of the year to LGBTQ issues, writing two columns and a news article about the origins of Pride Month.

Once it came out, the administrators and the superintendent, Jeff Edwards, chose to shut down the 54-year-old newspaper.

The Orwellian dystopia novel practically writes itself: views of our Glorious Administration reinstated against the vicious lies of a (now closed) school newspaper. But there is no oppression in the United States of America.

Now more than ever, when the internet is rife with misinformation, we the students need access to news outlets that we can rely on with the confidence that something hasn’t been altered to make it more ‘palatable’ for the general public.  Censorship is a crime against the basic human right of expressing one’s opinion. 

But we’ve seen something like this before: Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, 1988.

The Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier Supreme Court case dealt with students suing their school for removing articles from print, two of which dealt with teen pregnancy and divorce.

Essentially, it was ruled that any article that didn’t fall in line with the principal or administration’s “basic educational mission” could be removed, shutting the door and the conversation on more impactful, ‘controversial’ topics.

This gives school administration free rein to designate what’s categorized as educational, and in more conservative areas, like Grand Island, lets them completely shut down any and all conversations that could spark change.

According to an article from the Index on Censorship, the ability to express opinions is crucial for change in our society. 

“Free speech does not mean giving bigots a free pass. Bad ideas are most effectively defeated by good ideas – backed up by ethics, reason – rather than by bans and censorship,” human rights activist Peter Tatchell said.

Since the First Amendment, protection of freedom of speech, extends to all levels of government, including public schools, students are technically protected from government overreach. Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier negated this, however, since school administrators are allowed to essentially bypass it and blatantly oppress student voices by, for example, shutting down entire school newspapers or censoring specific articles.

We need to fight back as the people in power are actively trying to take away our most valuable tool: speech. The only way we can get through this struggle against censorship is by staying informed and standing together.

From 1988 MO to 2022 NE, we’ve been seeing censorship affect students’ rights of freedom of speech for literal decades. If this generation truly is supposed to take on the world after graduation, it’s vital that we are well-informed walking into it– which is impossible if all our information is hand-selected and spoon-fed under the feeble guise of ‘protection’ and ‘controversy’. This blatant censorship due to outright hate and bigotry needs to be stopped.