By Maddie Hunt
The New Voices act, Senate Bill 5064, was scheduled for a third reading yesterday. If passed, it would hand freedom of speech rights to public school and higher education students.
The bill gives student editors control of the news, opinions, features and advertisement that go into student papers.
The prevention of student expression has been an issue for many years in the education system.
The Supreme Court case known as Tinker v. Des Moines, presented in 1969, set a legal precedent for institutional censorship of anything that might “materially and substantially interfere” with classes or the institution’s performance.
While many challenges have tried to overrule this standard, all have failed.
The New Voices act, originally structured by King County Councilman Dave Upthegrove in 2005, was brought to life again in 2016 by Senator Joe Fain (R).
While dying out in other states, this bill still lives on in Washington.
The impact of the New Voices bill also includes job security for teachers and media advisors, without the fear of termination, transfers, removal, or discipline for observing students’ free-speech rights.
School officials could only censor student media in cases of libel or slander, invasion of privacy, indecencies or obscenities according to the Federal Communications
Act or any rule or regulation of the Federal Communications Commission.
“I enthusiastically support the principles behind free speech and a free press,” said Rick Ross, associate dean of athletics and student life. Ross is a former journalist, and was once a Buccaneer staffer.
He said he hadn’t looked deeply into this piece of legislation, but he tends to subscribe to the idea, “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”
“I’m not aware of a single time in our 57-year history when the Buc was censored. We also have a history of outstanding advisers who teach responsible journalistic practices,” Ross added.
The rights granted in this bill would extend not just to colleges, but to high schools as well, where some student journalists are required to have articles approved by school staff before publication.
“The Timberline had to go through the principle before printing it or it would not be published,” said Ceara Webster, former photographer and designer of the Port Angeles High School newspaper, the Timberline.“Most of the time, we wouldn’t get the paper out on time because the principles editing would take so long.”