Our primary goal as journalists is to educate and inform the school community of relevant and important information concerning the audience. So why don’t we write about Kylie Jenner’s 2.7 million dollar house, or the immense amount of skin that a pop star shows on stage? It’s simple: it’s not relevant.

The Spotlight is a school newspaper. We, as journalists, write to provide information that one may not be able to obtain from a tabloid or an overly sensationalized magazine article. We chase the truth and hope to present accurate and valuable information.

“My primary goal is to make sure the articles are written according to the standards of quality journalism and I advise my student journalists to make responsible decisions when it comes to the content they choose to put into the newspaper,” journalism teacher and newspaper adviser, Mrs. Marlo Spritzer said.

So, what does the Spotlight publication process actually look like? The process starts out with student reporters picking a topic to write on, interviewing relevant people, gathering accurate information, and then putting it all together. From there, two courses of action appear.

Once articles are graded for quality by Mrs. Spritzer, they are passed along to the student editors. From there, the editors select the most relevant and well written articles for publication. Once the student editors check for grammar, spelling and style errors, the newspaper’s layout is checked for any formatting mistakes by the student editor- in chief. FInally, the newspaper adviser, Mrs.Spritzer, double checks the layout and the articles’ grammar, pronunciation, and attribution.

Now, the big question: What next?

After the adviser is done looking for errors, she sends it straight to the publisher.

However, of students surveyed, 42 percent believed that the Spotlight is censored by the administration. This is simply not true.

“I don’t see it before anyone else,” Principal Mrs. Christine Siegfried said.

Southern Lehigh High School is a public school, and therefore the administrators do not have the power to restrict students’ first amendment rights.

In addition to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, states can provide additional free speech protection for their own citizens. The Pennsylvania Code’s section on Student Rights and Responsibilities provides student journalists attending public high schools with added protection against administrative censorship.

According to the Pennsylvania Public School Code, “Students shall have the right to express themselves unless the expression materially and substantially interferes with the educational process, threatens serious harm to the school or community, encourages unlawful activity or interferes with another individual’s rights.”

Even if Southern Lehigh administration did censor the student newspaper, it would not be a very smart tactic on their part. In theory, one would think that the administrators would choose to censor the paper in order to protect the school from liability in “offensive” articles. However, this is not supported in court decisions. By choosing to review our paper, the school can be held accountable for anything offensive that may be printed. That being said, the best protection a school can provide itself is not to censor at all but to hire competent publication advisers and to distance itself from the content decisions made by student editors.

The Spotlight newspaper is and intends to remain an entirely student-run newspaper functioning with adviser guidance on quality production. Our articles are consistently fact checked by student reporters to ensure validity. We as a staff do our best to provide the student body with relevant information.

If anyone has questions, comments, or suggestions, they are encouraged to write a letter to the editor at [email protected]