Ex-York Teacher Faced 'Contradictory Pressures' During Controversy

David Venetucci, a retired teacher from Elmhurst School District 205, is writing a memoir. Here is the part about a controversy at York High School's student newspaper:

A competent high school journalism educator will be able to state the significance of two landmark legal decisions impacting student 1st Amendment expression in public schools. School administrators should be able to do the same.

At the height of the Vietnam War era in 1969, the Supreme Court’s Tinker v Des Moines Independent School District case established that American public school students don’t “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of expression at the schoolhouse gate,” except in instances where school officials can demonstrate that speech will “materially and substantially disrupt” the educational process.

In the Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier case in 1988, SCOTUS narrowed the extent of student 1st Amendment rights in public schools by declaring that school administrators could “exercise prior restraint” (aka: censor) students participating in “school-sponsored activities” any time school officials could cite a “legitimate pedagogical concern.” Since the word “pedagogical” is synonymous with “educational,” this high court decision afforded school officials significant latitude to censor students participating in activities such as the school newspaper, yearbook, student council, drama, clubs, as well as sports—essentially any activity on which the school had placed its official imprimatur. This ability to control the expression of public school students remains the law of the land today and also impacts teachers who supervise students in any school-sponsored activity.

Serving as the faculty adviser of a high school publication is a challenging task that requires educators to encourage students' creativity, curiosity, and desire for independence while ensuring kids make solid journalistic decisions. Teachers with journalism backgrounds typically encourage students to cover controversial, albeit newsworthy, stories in the school community, usually to the chagrin of school administrators who are less keen about student journalists exposing “scandals” that draw negative public attention.

With an undergraduate degree in Mass Communications and experience in both print journalism and TV news, I became the faculty advisor of York High School’s award-winning student newspaper, the York-Hi, in the fall of 1989, when the previous advisor took a sabbatical leave of absence. I remained the English Department faculty member in charge of the student newspaper until the conclusion of the 1994-95 academic year. This is an account of how I lost that plum supervisory assignment.

My newspaper students were abuzz on the Monday following York’s Homecoming in the fall of 1994 with news that one of the men’s cross-country team’s top runners had been busted at the school dance for alcohol possession. This would have been big news at any high school, but it was an enormous development at York because of the perennial success of the school’s nationally heralded boys cross-country program. Going into Homecoming weekend that year, the varsity team was top-rated and expected to win yet another state title. Adding to the newsworthiness of this situation was York’s school theme that particular academic year, a motto that – if I recall accurately – focused on “making good choices” and “demonstrating personal responsibility.” With this irony in mind, my newspaper staff was chomping at the bit to cover the story in the next issue, due out in a couple of weeks.

We spent considerable time as a staff discussing the pros and cons of covering this story. I reminded students that while they had the journalistic power to publish stories about “newsworthy” incidents such as this, the school administration had the legal authority to censor those pieces, as per the 1988 Hazelwood case, a legal precedent students were familiar with from my journalism classes. Students asked whether the newspaper staff needed to share potentially controversial stories with the administration in advance, risking censorship. I explained that, to the best of my knowledge, York-Hi faculty advisers seldom, if ever, sought prior approval with the administration before publication. I could see where this was headed and was supportive, with this firm caution to my adolescent journalists: “We need to do this correctly, folks.” I explained to my eager staff that we needed to thread a journalistic needle here by covering this story in general terms and not shine a public spotlight directly on the student involved. That’s easier said than done, of course, especially with adolescent journalists.

With the adage “It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission…”, I told my staff that I would honor their request and not give the administration a heads-up about their upcoming coverage. Feeling empowered, the students busied themselves writing up a page 1 story and accompanying editorial op-ed piece. It was a moment of journalistic excitement, but also a situation that I approached with trepidation, knowing full well that any false step with our coverage could have profoundly negative consequences.

Sure enough, I realized we had a big problem early on the day the next issue was released when an assistant principal came into my classroom/newspaper office, holding a copy of the newspaper and looking frantic. Besides the controversy of simply covering this high-profile story, we had inadvertently made two huge mistakes. The first was that a photo accompanying the page 1 story had somehow been “cropped” incorrectly. Instead of showing a group of boys cross-country runners, the published photo focused mainly on the student involved in the Homecoming alcohol incident. The photo caption and page 1 story also included the student’s name. That was NOT supposed to happen. The photo cropping problem could have been a printing production error, but how did the caption and story get published with this kid’s name included? None of the students assigned to produce page 1 would take responsibility. Nor did the student editors with editorial control duties. I never figured out precisely how it happened. These unacceptable editorial faux pas did precisely the opposite of our announced goals for this controversial story and, of course, were ultimately my responsibility as “the adult” in charge. I learned a valuable lesson about editorial oversight here, but the damage was done. I was in hot H2O immediately with the administration, as were my students, albeit indirectly.

Despite these self-inflicted editorial miscues, my staff lobbied vociferously for continued coverage of the story. Supporting that dicey student request became an impossibility when I was summoned to the principal’s office the next school day on short notice to meet with the irate parent of the cross-country student we unfortunately had featured on page 1 of the recent issue.

I’ve dealt with my share of emotional, overprotective, enabling parents during my nearly three decades as an educator, but this meeting was way over the top on that front. I recall sitting diagonally across a conference table from the enraged dad, accompanied by York’s then-principal, a D205 assistant superintendent, and then-English Department chairperson.

My attempts at explaining the journalistic rationale for the newspaper’s coverage were met with barely controlled parental contempt. If this outraged dad had allowed me to explain things from a journalistic perspective, I would have discussed the concept of “public figures” and how, even in scholastic journalism, when public figures are involved in “newsworthy” events, journalists have a 1st Amendment right to report on those stories of community interest. Does that mean student journalists should publish stories about every scandalous accusation they might run across during a school year? Absolutely not. A right to do something doesn’t mean a requirement. By all reasonable definitions, this prominent student athlete caught drinking at Homecoming was a public figure in the school community. Considering the school’s boys cross country program’s national reputation at the time, the same journalistic litmus test could be applied to anything “newsworthy” having to do with that team. That’s how journalism works, like it or not.

At the same time, did this parent have a legitimate grievance with York-Hi staff and me as their faculty adviser in this unfortunate instance? Absolutely. As a parent myself, I understand the desire to come to the aid of progeny in times of crisis. I had a kindergarten-age daughter at the time of this incident and a baby boy on the way. I got it then and I get it now. However, choosing when and how best to help our kids is usually the difference between assisting and enabling when it comes to effective parenting. Before charging into the school with a limbic system on overdrive, did this parent take a moment to perhaps consider that the school newspaper’s coverage might be an appropriate, albeit undesirable, logical consequence of his son’s poor choices while in a position of campus leadership as a talented runner on the state’s top-ranked cross country team? It sure didn’t appear so, at least not to me that day. And, for the record, none of the information my students published wasn’t already common knowledge in the school community. The gossip grapevine typically moves swiftly amongst adolescents.

During this extraordinarily tense meeting, when, in complete transparency, I mentioned that my staff was considering follow-up coverage in the next issue, as well as publishing story corrections, including an apology, the dad went berserk, literally screaming at me, threatening legal action against me personally for the immediate and potential long-term harm the student newspaper was inflicting on his college-bound son. Outnumbered, outranked, and taken aback by this parent’s ferocious verbal assault, I agreed reluctantly, but wisely, that no follow-up coverage would occur in the next issue. As participants exited the principal’s conference room, I remember my department chairperson offering what appeared to be condolences to the parent. The next thing I recall was seeing a look of abject disappointment on my department chairperson’s face. I had seen that look of disapproval previously, for sure, but never as resolute. It was, of course, a foreshadowing, a hint of what was to come.

I did my best at damage control with the administration and my student staff following that contentious meeting. Despite our unfortunate journalistic miscues, my students were still fired up about the situation and felt particularly aggrieved when the administration enlisted district lawyers to formally invoke the Hazelton case in a document the then-assistant principal hand-delivered to me and required that I share with my staff. That document was an administrative dictum – in legal form – that mandated no follow-up coverage of the cross-country story, including published corrections. Yes, my staff inadvertently, perhaps carelessly, had made several key mistakes covering that story. We totally screwed up. That student athlete was a minor at the time, and his name should not have been published. We owned up to that mistake as a newspaper staff and genuinely desired to set the record straight but were prohibited from doing so.

Proverbial tails between our legs at that point, but with sage encouragement from some faculty members and a few outspoken newspaper staff parents, we kept doing our thing and ably published a new edition of the York-Hi each month for the remainder of that academic year without undue controversy.

Not privy to what I already had learned and had accepted, my newspaper staff was taken aback in the spring of 1995 when news broke that a new faculty advisor would take over next school year. Some in the school community saw my “reassignment” as a professional injustice. Perhaps it was. With so many contradictory pressures involved, folks are entitled to differing opinions on such matters.

Looking back, instead of getting canned, I would have preferred that we were able to have a purposeful, rational discussion in the principal’s office, in the fall of 1994 and, working earnestly with the student athlete’s father, come up with an appropriate plan to remedy and atone for the journalistic mistakes my staff had made that had impacted this family. After that public reckoning, I could have been taken out to the administrative woodshed, given the allotted lashes, and pledged not to screw up like that again. My hunch is that while my bosses thought it unlikely I would make the same supervisory error again, they believed I’d inevitably make other errors as the newspaper’s faculty adviser, some perhaps consequential. They may have been correct in that determination. By this point in my teaching career, I already had a penchant for unconventional, instructional mischief and for stirring up “good trouble” in response to perceived educational or professional inequities. Some likely viewed me at the time – and maybe still do – as a semi-principled loose cannon, of sorts. I viewed myself then – and still do to this day – as a social justice quasi-crusader replete with contradictory pressures. My long-time therapist could probably explain it better.

Some postscripts

As expected, the York varsity boys cross country team placed 1st in the 1994 IHSA AA championship with a score of 139. The 2nd-place team was nearly 40 points behind York’s top five runners at Peoria’s Detweiller Park on Nov. 5th. I’ve long forgotten the student athlete's name who was busted for drinking at Homecoming that year and whose father threatened to sue me in order to protect his son from at least some of the logical consequences of the teen’s poor choices. I have no idea whether that student athlete contributed to the team’s success at the state meet that day. York’s varsity girls team took 4th place at state in 1994, also a fine athletic accomplishment.

I encountered new professional opportunities at YHS after leaving the newspaper gig. With faculty support and mostly tepid administrative backing, I created York’s first-ever broadcast journalism and TV production program. It was then – and hopefully remains – a dynamic, hands-on instructional program that provides valuable skills to students considering a broadcast media career.

While developing the TV program, I also spearheaded the adoption of the school district’s “Student Freedom of Expression” policy in the early 2000s. My best guess is this policy, which codified existing 1st Amendment law for District 205, is gathering dust on some office shelf these days. If so, that would be a shame, as that policy was a collaboratively negotiated document involving student, faculty and administrative input. I’ve consistently advocated that knowing the parameters of one’s 1st Amendment rights is essential knowledge for all individuals, students and educators in a public school setting.

I recall a long-ago conversation with my former English Department chairperson, where he acknowledged candidly that he decided to remove me as faculty adviser during that fateful 1994 parent meeting in the principal’s office. He intimated that the problems with that cross-country story had motivated him to change the student newspaper’s faculty leadership. My former boss is long retired from YHS and from a subsequent administrative gig at a well-respected Chicago-area educational non-profit. Considering our complicated professional relationship, it’s a tad ironic, I suppose, that this former boss and I have remained friendly over the years. We were more than cordial round-the-corner suburban neighbors for a time, occasionally breaking bread together with our significant others at local eateries, always with abundant laughter, despite the contradictory pressures we had experienced in our previous professional roles.

The principal involved in this story, an administrator whom I liked and respected, eventually moved on from D205 to run the show at a north suburban high school before retiring from a venerable career in public education. Sadly, he passed away in May 2025. I recall the personal note I received from this dedicated educator before he left YHS. In that handwritten note, despite the challenges we shared in the fall of 1994, the principal complimented me on my professional passion and tireless advocacy for students. I still have that note. Unlike other administrators I’ve worked with in my career, this particular educator was a class act.

I remain good friends today with the talented English faculty member, now retired, who took over York’s student newspaper in 1995. My colleague inherited a semi-mutinous teenage staff aggrieved that their previous adviser had been summarily fired. Still, my colleague persevered, recruited new staff members each school year, cultivated new loyalties, and continued the tradition of journalism excellence for which York’s student newspaper is recognized.

I’d posit most school administrators lack the knowledge to appreciate the mindset of student journalists seeking editorial truth and inherent controversy. That assumption notwithstanding, I’ll acknowledge that steering the ship of a suburban public high school is, without question, a difficult task, as is supervising a diverse, intellectual cadre of English Department faculty members. Wrangling a student newspaper staff is similarly and uniquely challenging. Equally arduous is the responsibility of parenting a talented high school student athlete, especially in times of self-induced adolescent crisis. All these jobs involve managing a host of contradictory pressures under demanding circumstances effectively. It’s not easy work, and nobody’s perfect.

Those who enjoy delving into landmark 1st Amendment cases should research the Tinker and Hazelwood decisions online. Both cases are fascinating and instructive. When I taught these cases to high school journalism students years ago, I emphasized that understanding one’s civil rights is essential to be a competent scholastic journalist. I added that it’s also one’s civic duty to understand this topic when living in a functioning democracy. Using this empowering knowledge wisely is paramount, I would proclaim, especially if democracy is under attack, as it is today, sadly.

Knowledge is power, my friends, contradictory pressures be damned.