Months after an attorney called the destruction of Albemarle High School student newspapers “one of the silliest censorship cases I’ve ever seen,” the eyebrow-raising editorial has finally been published.
The editorial questioned whether student-athletes need gym class. Though the Revolution editorial was published late last school year, the newspapers were trashed, after physical education teachers complained to administrators.
At the time, Student Press Law Center attorney Adam Goldstein offered to help the students find counsel, pro bono, to file a lawsuit against the school. The student journalists declined.
“The reason we were given for the holding of the editorial was that publishing it in May would not give readers enough of an opportunity to respond,” the editorial’s writer, Ellie Leech, wrote in a statement on Friday.
After administrators’ controversial decision to trash the papers, Leech said their array of justifications were illegitimate and the censorship violated her First Amendment rights.
Principal Jay Thomas blamed the withholding largely on typos in the newspaper and concerns about how Leech might handle backlash from what some believed was a contentious editorial.
Questions about how Leech would handle the heat were unfounded, Leech said.
Sean Cudahy, who was the newspaper’s editor-in-chief at the time, had said that the decision to destroy the papers was directly tied to Leech’s editorial, dismissing administrators’ other justifications, some of which were never mentioned in a meeting in which school leaders discussed scrapping the original edition, according to Cudahy.
Schools communications coordinator Maury Brown wrote in an e-mail to school officials at the time: “PE teachers expressed some concern over the editorial, as well as the quality of the final publication. In particular, PE teachers were concerned that the opinion article was one-sided.”
In this month’s edition of The Revolution, the original editorial is published in its entirety, underneath an article about gym class requirements and procedures, also written by Leech.
“I found that in general, gym in high school was a waste of time, and certainly so for student-athletes,” Leech wrote in a statement.
To read Leech’s editorial and P.E. article, visit https://sites.google.com/site/therevolutionahspaper/. Letters to the editor can be sent to Albemarle High School, Room 201, or e-mailed to theahsrevolution@gmail.com.
“I believe the outcome of this whole mess ultimately turned out for the best. My editorial raised the same point that is being raised in many discussions of high school education all over the country,” Leech said. “It was very interesting to see the dialogue raised between people regarding this subject. I made my point.
“Although I never expected this much of a fuss to be made over it,” Leech said.
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