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Florida
Teen sex stories pulled; Hazelwood cited
Ingrid Sloth did not think her newspaper had overstepped the bounds of good taste, but adminis. tration officials at Stanton CoUege Preparatory School in Florida appar ently thought otherwise. And in the wake of the Hazelwood decision, the school's principal used her authority to censor stories from the paper. Newspaper staffers at the magnet high school had been researching and writing a two-page section on teenage sexuality for their paper, the Devil's Advocate, since early January. The articles were scheduled to appear in the February issue. To the student's dismay the school's principal, Dr. Veronica Val entine, deemed the articles inappro priate for a portion of the paper's audience, and demanded that the articles be puUed. The school has students in grades seven through 12. "As my kids were working on the articles, I couldn't see anything truly offensive in [them]," Sloth said. 1 0 SPLC Report
The articles dealt with sexuaUy transmitted di seases, counseling and sex education, and quoted statistics from Newsweek and Seventeen mag azines on unplanned pregnancies and the U.S. pregnancy rate as compared with other nations. Sloth says she was called into Valentine's office for a conference February 8, and that she told Valen tine about the articles. Valentine then asked whether she considered the articles controversial, and when Sloth admitted that they could be so interpreted, Valentine responded she would need to review all controver sial articles before publication in the future. A week later, Dr. Valentine sent Sloth a letter criticizing her perfor mance as newspaper sponsor, in part because of her failure to follow a November request to "refrain from publishing the articles in question until the Hazelwood case was decid ed and procedures could be devel-
oped . . . pertinent to the inclusion of these controversial topics in school newspapers." Tb.e two had discussed publication of sexually related arti cles in a November meeting. She was also criticized for failing to notify Valentine before she and managing editor Susan Loftin were interviewed by local media for their reactions to Hazelwood. Valentine cited a Duval County School Board policy that expres!<ly forbids discussion of abortion, ho mosexuality and masturbation in the school curriculum, although none of these topics was addressed in the stories. In addition, the policy r:e quires written parental consent f.:>r discussion of human reproduction 'in health classes. The letter also set forth specifj.c procedures Sloth was to follow for the remainder of the year, including the submission of "all copy pertinent to controversial topics" for review and the development of adequate Spring 1 988