Past includes other attempts at censorship

Two seniors at Lawrence High School were suspended in 2000 after the principal objected to their distribution of an alternative newspaper.

LHS Principal Dick Patterson said the newspaper, Low Budget, put together by Lee Dunfield and Brad Quellhorst couldn’t be handed out to students because it hadn’t been authorized by his office.

“It was nonapproved,” Patterson said at the time. “It’s disruptive to school.”

The students claimed they had a constitutional right to hand out their newspaper. In the end, Patterson relented after Supt. Randy Weseman made it clear the students had a legal right to distribute their paper.

After two weeks of negotiation, Dunfield and Quellhorst agreed to subject their publication to the same level of administrative review as the school’s official paper, The Budget.

At Patterson’s urging, the students pulled a story about religion and deleted a photograph. Without causing a disruption, the controversy ended with the students handing out 200 copies to LHS students and staff.

Other instances of attempted censorship of Kansas high school publications:

  • In 1997, the Great Bend High School newspaper published a student editorial criticizing school administrators for allowing a student with prominent parents to escape punishment for rules violations. Principal Mike Hester ordered the editorial page removed from the newspaper but later restored the page.
  • John Mohn, a high school newspaper adviser for 34 years, said he was threatened with loss of his job if certain stories were published. Among stories administrators tried to block: the cost of new flagpoles for the football field and source of the money; students kissing in the halls; teenage pregnancy; reasons why school board members voted on sensitive issues; editorials on flag burning.
  • In 1992, the faculty adviser at Pittsburg High School grappled with a principal who demanded a homecoming advertisement be changed. The adviser said the principal wanted the ad to feature students of parents that he wanted to impress for political reasons.