New School Politics

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Recently I wrote a letter to the editor of the Greenwich Time regarding administrative regulation of student media at my high school, but especially of the student newspaper. Here’s a fraction of it:

The systematic, bureaucratic censorship of The Beak (the name of the paper), as well as all other student media at GHS, severely hamstrings the intellectual and informational quality of its product. A myriad of regulations are enforced on a whim by a single faculty adviser who has the pressure of school administration on his shoulders. Similarly, other publications, such as the satirical Weekling, and any organization wishing to disseminate information are unilaterally censored by the overbearing student activities office.

In the three years that I have written for the paper I have had three editorials censored–one on abortion, one on Islam, and one criticizing a myriad of invasive laws including bans on steroids, prostitution, marijuana, and the drinking age. In addition, I have witnessed a list of columns not published because of the whimsical regulations on what is “appropriate” for young adults.

The case I am trying to make is not one a moralistic, first amendment one. To the contrary, I do not think that the first amendment holds much weight in this situation. Thus, I am not disputing the Supreme Court decision from Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, which essentially says that because the school is essentially the property of the government, the school administration has the right to regulate student speech to their liking.

However, whether the school can and whether the school should regulate speech are two different issues. Call me a romantic, but I thought that the goal of a school was to maximize the body of knowledge and curiosity of students (although I think that makes me more rational than romantic). I do not see how schools could at once be promoting an intellectual environment when they are systematically stifling various issues and opinions.

Take the issue of teen pregnancy, for instance, which was the disputed topic in the Hazelwood case. Few would dispute that it is a touchy subject. But what audience better to address it with than teens? The article in question contained primary sources discussing the reality of the issue. I don’t see how talking about the matter in an open and honest manner could hurt students. To the contrary, I can only imagine that talking about it would inform students and prevent pregnancy for those who are informed by the newspaper article.

Similarly, one of my censored columns was a critical examination of certain aspects of Islam. While conventional wisdom tells us not to discuss religion in public, not discussing religion freely and in a philosophical manner does nothing to reduce “intolerance” (which is what my editorial was labeled). The more informed and rational people are and the more they understand that it is okay to disagree even on matters as fundamental as religion, the more rounded and tolerant our educational institutions will be.

The saddest part about the censorship, which I should also mention is not practiced nearly as much as it is practiced in colleges, is that it muffles the creativity of students. While schools should be attempting to teach their kids as much about the world as possible, they only have so much time. The greatest reflection on educators is when they can foster the creativity and passion of individual students. Such initiative is manifest in students who examine fringe and risque issues in a scholarly manner. And while these cases are rare, the last thing that should be done by in response is censor them.

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Here is the most recent cover story from Time. It questions the present allocation of educational funding, wondering whether enough is invested in the brightest of students. Here is a taste:

American schools spend more than $8 billion a year educating the mentally retarded. Spending on the gifted isn’t even tabulated in some states, but by the most generous calculation, we spend no more than $800 million on gifted programs. But it can’t make sense to spend 10 times as much to try to bring low-achieving students to mere proficiency as we do to nurture those with the greatest potential.

That is really a jaw-dropping statistic, but it shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been in a public school more than once in the past year. And of course it makes me sound heartless, but allocating so much more funding to the mentally retarded than to the mentally gifted is just…retarded. It is simply a bad investment. When it comes down to it, all of us, especially the disabled, have the greatest interest in the geniuses of the world.

The brightest among us are the ones who invent the technologies that make our lives earlier, who pick the most productive of companies to invest in, and who find ways to deliver products at cheap prices to billions of customers across the globe at once. Much of the wealth around us can be attributed to the ideas that originated from very innovative men and women, and were shared and capitalized upon with others.

Without the vast resources produced by the world’s geniuses, we would never be able to support the disabled to the extent we do. As I see it, we owe it to the mentally retarded among us to invest more in our most gifted of children as they will be the most productive in the future.

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I’m at the Personal Democracy Forum at Pace University in New York City right now watching a group seminar with Jay Rosen, Mike Connell, Jeff Jarvis, and Walter Fields. I’ll be publishing more thoughts about this morning’s sessions and what was said later this evening and over the weekend. Jay Rosen, founder of NewAssignment.net and AssignmentZero, is discussing both projects and his new partnership with the Huffington Post. Today, Rosen has given the project a name. OfftheBus, the project’s new name, will be a collaboration between NewAssignment.net and the Huffington Post in an effort to bring the public the best election coverage. Arianna Huffington was unable to make PdF today although she was a scheduled speaker. Rosen cited that he believed that having over forty independent bloggers in cities around the country to cover the elections would be a far better alternative than having one journalist stay with the presidential campaign.

The new website will help to foster new media interaction in the presidential campaigns, something that’s been sorely lacking in recent campaigns. Will 2008 be the year of the democratization of election coverage? According to several of the panelists, new breakthroughs in media and pilot projects like Rosen’s NewAssignment and AssignmentZero signal what’s to come. Jeff Jarvis, both an old media pioneer and a champion of new media causes, seems to approve of Rosen’s new project with several reservations. The audience seems to have come to the same consensus. Only time, however, will tell if the distributed reporting in the 2008 elections will hold up to that of professional reporters.

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The shooting at Virginia Tech is undeniably one of the worst tragedies American students have ever faced.  Stories of heroism make their way out of the situation, but the media is focused on the death and destruction caused on the campus of Virginia Tech University. One thing, however, should give Virginia Tech students, and Americans throughout the country, something to be proud of.  In the absence of professional newsmen, students took control of the media, showing an unprecedented ability to shape the coverage regarding their event.

In the wake of the worst campus massacre ever in the United States, dozens of news organizations flocked to Virginia to cover the tragedy. Before they arrived, however, the mainstream media relied on reports from those already on the ground: the college students themselves. Armed with the video and still cameras on their mobile phones, dozens of students set out to create their own coverage of an incident that was very much their own. The first audio and video accounts of the incident aired by CNN came from iReport, their citizen journalism program. The video, shot on a Nokia smartphone, made its way around the networks, all courtsey of a Virginia Tech student named Jamal Albarghouti.

Dozens of similar stories are to be told. In the hours preceding the arrival of professional reporters, Virginia Tech students had, unfortunately, the opportunity to shape the world’s news. Their coverage helped to show the world how terrible the massacre was and helped to qualm some fears about students that were safe. Twitter, a “stream of consciousness” blogging tool by Obvious Corp (utilized mostly by web celebrities such as Robert Scoble and Thomas Hawk), served constant updates to the internet, courtesy of a user named Tom Markiewicz. Chris Pirillo, a web celebrity in his own right, helped to stream live coverage with a tool called UStream.tv. His conversation with Planet Blacksburg, a new student-run publication from Virginia Tech, captured nationwide attention as sections were aired on various evening news programs.

What most surprised me, however, was the caliber and tenacity of the coverage coming from the students themselves at Virginia Tech. Via the aforementioned Planet Blackburg, they helped to broadcast news of the tragedy throughout the world, becoming the go-to site for immediate updates. The Web2.0 movement, which many experts see as a bubble ready to burst, finally showcased its effectiveness yesterday. YouTube has showed its staying power by drawing users in to watch videos on their website. The entire citizen journalism movement, however, displayed its prominence yesterday with the Virginia Tech shooting. Never, in years past, would internet surfers be granted the same hard-hitting coverage as Planet Blacksburg provided yesterday.

In this day and age, everyone is a reporter. Yesterday, as CNN broadcast video from a student’s cellphone video, and as Planet Blacksburg updated faster than the almighty network news, it became apparent. The “new media” is here to stay, and, from the looks of it, it’s ready to provide better coverage than had ever been imagined. The shooting at Virginia Tech has caused incredible sadness and grief. It has, however, caused something else: the birth of a new generation of reporters.

News of the incident continues to stun the staff here at New School Politics. In the coming days, we’ll be doing everything we can to help, but for the moment, the best we can do is to give our condolences to those involved in the tragedy at Virginia Tech. On April 30th, we’ll be participating in One Day Blog Silence, a day of quiet on the blogosphere dedicated to the memory of those who lost their lives in this terrible tragedy.

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