Students who have been sharing photos, video and other information with local media in an effort to help document conditions inside their schools during Denver’s first teachers strike in 25 years say they’re receiving pushback from school administrators.
Toby Lichenwalter, a 17-year-old who is executive producer of East High School’s broadcast team, was called to meet with Principal John Youngquist on Tuesday after Lichenwalter filmed chaotic scenes inside the school during the first day of the teacher walkout Monday.
“He told me I can only film for personal things,” Lichenwalter said. “If I communicate with media, he can’t let me be on school property. In order to communicate with media, we had to leave our own school.”
Youngquist told The Denver Post that he did speak with East High students who had been communicating with the local media, but said students were not being told to leave school.
“What I said was when they’re sending information directly to media, they’re acting as agents of that media source,” Youngquist said.
When asked about the context of his meeting with student journalists, Youngquist said he meets with hundreds of students every day and checks in with them all the time. He said students will not receive school punishment for sharing information with the press.
“His rationale is if we are sharing with media, we are classified as media and can’t be on district property,” Lichenwalter said. “In reality, we are just students trying to get the word out.”
Joe McComb, an 18-year-old senior at Thomas Jefferson High School, shared his experience inside the school with The Denver Post and other media on Monday, and, by Tuesday, said he was being told by school administrators that he could not take photos of what was going on.
“It was apparent that school administration had heard about reporting from TJ students in the news and some were not happy about it,” McComb said. “I pushed back and said that people have the right to know what’s going on inside the school. The response I received was something to the effect of, ‘We don’t want the school on the news.’
“I was also informed that I didn’t have the right to take these photos in the first place because media-release forms weren’t provided for the photos and videos to be used.”
Jack Kennedy, executive director of the Colorado Student Media Association, said this argument “absolutely does not apply” to students taking photos. Rather, it’s an issue involving the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act that the district and “the adults” need to abide by.
“But try explaining that to an administrator in crisis mode,” Kennedy said. “I don’t think it would go over well.”
Kennedy said arguing that students become “agents” of the media outlets they share information with is “a stretch.”
“They are functioning citizens of America, so I’m pretty sure they can speak to the press,” Kennedy said. “If the argument is that they have to step off school grounds to hit the send button to media, then I guess I would tell them to do that, and we can figure out what to do about this after.”
Kennedy said, to his knowledge, there aren’t policies in place in Colorado that address this issue directly.
Colorado, however, is one of at least seven states that provide specific protection for high school students against censorship from administrators, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.
“I don’t think anybody is being malicious,” Kennedy said. “I think there’s a disconnect between controlling information. What’s your purpose for wanting to control information? The district will be fine sending out all kinds of information from calm, quiet schools.”
Ariana Maes, a sophomore at John F. Kennedy High School, ran into pushback from administrators at her schools after she photographed students walking out of class and sitting in the school’s auditorium.
Maes said she and a couple of her peers who are part of the school’s yearbook staff were trying to document what was happening inside their school during the teachers strike.
“We were told by administration that this was not a positive thing to be capturing and we needed to find somewhere else to take pictures,” she said.
School administrators from John F. Kennedy High School did not return requests for comment Tuesday afternoon.
Frank LoMonte, the director of the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information and the former executive director of the Student Press Law Center, said this is an issue that has been coming up more and more across the country.
LoMonte said many schools have prohibitions on cellphone use, and “if a school has a regulation that only incidentally applies to journalistic speech, then they can enforce it.” Still, the school has to have a regulation already in place that’s uniformly applied.
But if a school allows a student to record for personal purposes, then a student should be allowed to do whatever he or she wants with that footage. “Once video is legal for you to shoot, then it is equally legal for you to share,” he said.
It’s not just teen journalists who say they faced problems.
Students at the Denver School of Innovation and Sustainable Design said they also were reprimanded for filming their substitute teacher in the classroom. Senior Aaliyah Montes said students were recording the sub because she was making condescending comments toward the students and about the strike.
Montes said that after the students were required to stop filming, the substitute teacher turned around and began to record them, furthering the confrontation.
Denver School of Innovation and Sustainable Design Principal Lisa Simms declined to comment on the matter Tuesday.
