As journalists shaken by the death of one of our peers, my high school newspaper staff wanted to write about Corey’s death and follow up with an article about teen suicide. The administration decided that we could not, under any circumstances, write anything about him in the paper. We were furious, because all that we intended to do was to write about our feelings of loss and pain, about how sad it was that he was gone after having taken his own life. We wanted to expose the issue of teenage suicide in what we felt was a safe, public manner. From the school’s perspective, we were advocating it by putting it in the written word. This argument about censorship between students and administrations had been going on for ages.

For high school journalists, censorship has long been inevitable. For decades, high school administrations across the country have been attempting to control what students

On the other hand, high school journalists have rights, too. Just because there are students at their schools whose parents don’t think very highly of individual opinions does not mean that the journalists should suffer.

Censorship, by definition, is suppressing anything objectionable, meaning subject matter considered to be inappropriate. Schools tend to redefine this as subject matter considered to be inappropriate for school aged people and subject matter distracting to the learning environment. School administrators use their power to decide what may or may not be viewed both in literature (books, magazines, etc.) and school-created news media, such as school newspapers and yearbooks. Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Governmental Studies at the University of Virginia, once wrote that critics see journalists as "hypocritical of others yet vengeful when criticized ... wrapping themselves in the First Amendment when challenged on virtually anything." Journalists offer a slightly different opinion. They believe that they “had to listen to the people they were criticizing. If people want to reply to my work, more power to them. Just don’t stop me from saying the things I want to say.” (Megan Bruce, High School Journalist). It’s a difficult battle, because no one on either side is trying to do any harm; they both believe they have everyone’s best interes

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