Last week I talked about why it's important for allegedly humorous material to actually be funny, and a couple days ago a grand example landed right on my desk. The source is, of all things, my high school (Columbus Alternative High School, a.k.a. CAHS), by way of The Other Paper, a local indie not-exactly-newspaper.
The situation is that a student was suspended for a day for distributing an "underground" student newspaper called Verbal Abuse in the hallway, tucked inside copies of the official student newspaper, The CAHSmic Herald (yeah, I know...). He had been caught doing so before and asked to stop, but that didn't seem to bother him. The student's parents are issuing a first ammendment lawsuit against the district.
The Other Paper, in what I think demonstrates terrible journalistic form, spends about 95% of the article interviewing the staff of Verbal Abuse and the lawyer representing Ben Burkholder, the student who was suspended (not, himself, being a member of Verbal Abuse's staff), with a few generic comments from one or two school officials tokenly thrown in. The lawyer predicts that Burkholder's family will win (which... you know... duh; he's their freakin' lawyer), which The Other Paper uses to imply that they really will win.
I've talked to a few people who have read the article, most of whom, like The Other Paper, were jumping onto Burkholder's side. The dominant mode of thinking seems to be that Verbal Abuse is being censored, and censorship is a violation of free speech. The key phrase I've heard is "discrimination on the basis of content."
It always amazes me how many people who really should know about things like free press have ideas that just don't compute. Because it's pretty clear to me that Burkholder's position is not a free press issue at all.
Here's how it works: the staff of Verbal Abuse is free to print up and distribute all the newspapers they want, and they'll never have to worry about being incriminated, prosecuted, or fined. That's free press. And the school also has the right to forbid it from being distributed on school grounds if they see it as disruptive of the school environment.
Is that censorship? You betcha. It's probably also dumb, if for no other reason then because I still talk to CAHS students and nobody gives a flying frak about Verbal Abuse anyway (I've read a few of their stories myself, and I can see why. I'll give you a hint: it's because it's not funny).
What it's not is illegal or unconstitutional. I'm as anti-censorship as anybody, but you won't catch me thinking that institutional censorship and free speech aren't mutually exculsive. As I've made clear, I'm no fan of the MPAA, but they're free to stick their ratings on movies all they want; that's their right, the same way banning Verbal Abuse is the school's right.
As for "discrimination on the basis of content--" that's exactly what it is. And there's nothing wrong with that either. Discrimination on the basis of content is one of the industry's most widespread policies--except we tend to call it "selectiveness." If discrimination on the basis of content was unconstitutional then my magazine, Spinning Whorl would have to print every single story, article, and artwork that was submitted to us. Every issue would be 400 pages long and 99% of it would be crap. Every store in the country would have to carry it if we wanted them to, and they'd have to display it just as prominently as their bestselling titles. Barnes & Noble stores would be the size of a small town.
In any case, I'll be eagerly awaiting the outcome of Burkholder v. Columbus Public Schools.
To get back to issue of comedic value, though--and I may roast for saying this, but so be it--the main problem I see with viewing Verbal Abuse's situation as some kind of lofty question about free expression is the fact that the newspaper itself is... well... not good. To give you an idea, I'll quote The Other Paper:
In issue 7, the front-page story dealt with the district's credit recovery system, which allows students who have failed a course to recover the credit and graduate.
...
It then evolves--or devolves, depending on who's reading it--into a spoof of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, suggesting Upper Arlington* HIgh School students have the opportunity to purchase CAHS credit recovery students as slaves for a "going rate of about $10,000 per unit" resulting in $1 million in annual revenue for Columbus Public Schools.
Let's take a minute to recover from the side-splitting laughter we're all experiencing. Granted, these people are (at least, legally speaking) just kids--kids who I've only got about five years on, but whatever. Still, the fact is that the school's literary magazine puts out stuff that's about 10 times as "questionable" in terms of content as Verbal Abuse. Students pull goofy pranks all the time that don't land them suspensions.
Removing myself from the situation as much as possible, I think the pure and simple case is that things like Verbal Abuse that actually contain humor or some grain of creative quality go on in schools all the time and are allowed to continue within reason. But when they stop registering as funny or creative--as in Verbal Abuse's case, then a kid shoving copies into people's hands in the hallway registers as a disruption instead, and that's where the trouble starts.
I do think that suspending Burkholder was a stupid thing to do, and I sympathize with his family. I was a lonesome, artsy middle-schooler with an offbeat sense of humor during the Columbine era of zero-tolerance--enough said. But I also think that the dumbest thing of all is launching a free speech crusade out of an embarrassing clash with school policy.
Quick bit of advice: if your school offers any classes along the lines of "Entertainment and The Law," then I highly suggest taking them. One of the best things you can be in this field is knowledgeable about how what we do is governed; especially since there seems to be a shortage of people who are.
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