A federal court ruling 40 years ago today --- Tuesday, July 7, 1970 --- gave students at Stamford's Rippowam High School the right to distribute their newspapers without previous approval from school officials.
Informed of the federal court ruling, the late Andrew Warde High School headmaster Kenneth Petersen said at the time, "We will probably have to reconsider our position on student publications before the school opens in the Fall."
An underground student newspaper, The Glass Onion, published and distributed in December of 1969 in Warde and Ludlowe high schools by two seniors, one of whom was suspended, stirred a month-long bitter controversy in both high schools and the community before its publication was stopped after one issue.
School officials warned parents at a Board of Education open meeting in January of 1970 that while the administration could not control distribution of the paper on the streets, the school board rules banned the distribution in the schools of any material not approved by the administration.
An attorney for the Stamford student group said the ruling was "total victory" for freedom of expression in high school newspapers throughout the country. The ruling was made on Constitutional grounds.
The cases involved the Stamford Free Press, one of several underground student newspapers being distributed in and around the high school the previous year. The students involved with the Free Press were threatened with suspension in June of 1969 if they distributed any future issues of the publication on school property. Later that month, the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union took the youngsters' case to federal court.
U. S. District Court judge Robert Zampano ruled that the school administrators' requirement was "a classic example of prior restraint of speech and press which constitutes a violation of the First Ammendment."
Monroe Silverman, a Stamford attorney who represented the students for the Civil Liberties Union, said that the decision was an extension of the Constitutional guarantee "previously established by courts on a university level."
Zampano's decision said, "Student newspapers are valuable educational tools, and also serve to aid school administrators by providing them with an insight into student thinking and student problems. They are valuable peaceful channels of student protest, which should be encouraged, not suppressed."
The federal judge's decision went on to say that "the remedy for today's alienation and disorder among the young is not less, but more free expression of ideas."
Paul
Informed of the federal court ruling, the late Andrew Warde High School headmaster Kenneth Petersen said at the time, "We will probably have to reconsider our position on student publications before the school opens in the Fall."
An underground student newspaper, The Glass Onion, published and distributed in December of 1969 in Warde and Ludlowe high schools by two seniors, one of whom was suspended, stirred a month-long bitter controversy in both high schools and the community before its publication was stopped after one issue.
School officials warned parents at a Board of Education open meeting in January of 1970 that while the administration could not control distribution of the paper on the streets, the school board rules banned the distribution in the schools of any material not approved by the administration.
An attorney for the Stamford student group said the ruling was "total victory" for freedom of expression in high school newspapers throughout the country. The ruling was made on Constitutional grounds.
The cases involved the Stamford Free Press, one of several underground student newspapers being distributed in and around the high school the previous year. The students involved with the Free Press were threatened with suspension in June of 1969 if they distributed any future issues of the publication on school property. Later that month, the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union took the youngsters' case to federal court.
U. S. District Court judge Robert Zampano ruled that the school administrators' requirement was "a classic example of prior restraint of speech and press which constitutes a violation of the First Ammendment."
Monroe Silverman, a Stamford attorney who represented the students for the Civil Liberties Union, said that the decision was an extension of the Constitutional guarantee "previously established by courts on a university level."
Zampano's decision said, "Student newspapers are valuable educational tools, and also serve to aid school administrators by providing them with an insight into student thinking and student problems. They are valuable peaceful channels of student protest, which should be encouraged, not suppressed."
The federal judge's decision went on to say that "the remedy for today's alienation and disorder among the young is not less, but more free expression of ideas."
Paul
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