My Hero Ken LoMonte and the SPLC.org

Hannah Sagaser speaks with Ken LoMonte of the SPLC.org

Ken LoMonte is one of my heroes in the world of student journalism because he runs the Student Press Law Center (splc.org), which is instrumental in educating students, advisors, and their administrators in issues associated with publishing a student newspaper.

I had a 1^st Amendment incident this year and found the SPLC site by far the most informative on the Supreme Court decisions and California laws associated with  student press freedom. Based on his session today, I’d like to summarize what I think are the key lessons to take back you any journalism program.

-- Know the situation in your state. If you’re in one of the states with a state law that expands what the Supreme Court has defined, you’re lucky. But regardless of where you are, you’ve got to know what you can and can’t do.

2   -- Be subtle about any situation you find yourself in. I approached my situation as a team member trying to solve an educational problem, and we reached a very good result.

     -- I didn’t make any demands to my administration or even tell them that they had to do something. Instead, I printed the materials about the press freedom law in California from SPLC.org and passed it on the Superintendent of our school district through one of our school board members. I let them come to their own conclusion. Again, I made it clear that I was a team player and wanted to focus on the educational process, not a specific result associated with the article in question.

      -- Use the information from SPLC.org for lessons on both 1^st amendment rights and copyright. If you teach a course, you can use it in your class. If you’re an advisor only, you still need your students to know the range of their behavior.

The bottom line is that the 1^st Amendment is something that we have to both educate our students about and protect to the best of our ability as a journalism teacher and/or advisor – at least that’s the way I see it.

-- Steve Caswell
   Simi Valley High School
   Simi Valley, CA