Teachers Subserviant to Students

In a session that probably left teachers with more questions than answers, executive director of the Student Press Law Center Frank LoMonte engaged the 2011 edition of the Reynolds Institute with issues that challenge the First Amendment Rights of students, advisers, and student publications.

"You can advise as strongly as possible without stepping on the brake," he cautioned the crowd of 33 journalism teachers from around the country. "But after you advise by presenting both sides of the issues, leave the room and let the kids decide for themselves. The law first recognizes their freedom as being greater than yours,and this frees you from any additional responsibility."

LoMonte thoroughly engrossed the roomful of teachers with First Amendment isues that entailed the different degrees of Freedom of the Press, a history of the evolution of a student's First Amendment rights, copyright laws, public domain, fair use, and even dress code as a freedom of expression.

"Anything found on a .gov site is in the public domain," he said but then stressed strongly, "but that's the only thing in public domain that your students may want to use. Nothing else is truly in the public domain."

He elaborated on fair use. "Critics have the right to use the material they are critiquing, but only for critiquing. That's classic fair use."Beyond that, it depends on how much it takes away from the creative livlihood of the artist which is different in almost all cases.

He also pointed out that works annotated with a "cc" were free to be used. "It's called creative commons, and the artist waives some of his copyrights for fair use."

He spent over three hours going over such gray areas of the law, explaining how most have yet to be challenged at the court level, and how the FERPA is the most overused and misunderstood acts in schools today.

In the end teachers had a lot of questions. But they also had a lot of answers. Thanks to Frank LoMonte, advisers were given some good direction to start the next school year.

John Bradford
Creekview High School
Canton, GA