We’ve said it all. Now it’s time for the Fond du Lac Board of Education to say something, to support its students’ First Amendment rights, its journalism adviser Matthew Smith and its English department. Journalism Education Association Student Press Rights Center, the Student Press Law Center, JEA Wisconsin, Kettle Moraine Press Association, Northeastern Wisconsin Press Association, Poynter Institute and many news sources, web and print, like fdlreporter.com and huffingtonpost.com have gone on record to voice support for the Cardinal Columns responsible student journalists.

Currently, 5,000 people have signed the petition in support of the Cardinal Columns staff at change.org after viewing both the newspaper edition and Editor-in-Chief Tanvi Kumar’s open letter to Superintendent James Sebert. That number of supporters continues to grow. To suggest that such topics as rape do not touch our students and society and do not merit discussion to heighten awareness and increase knowledge is contradicted by this week’s NBC affiliate WTMJ Channel 4 news of a Mukwonago senior star athlete appearing in court on charges of rape, a Caledonia student being charged with sexual assault and three Concordia University students, barely beyond high school, being investigated for sexual assault. The Cardinal Columns article and sidebar on rape has been praised for high quality journalism showing both accuracy and sensitivity from experts like UW-Oshkosh journalism professor Vince Filak and ASTOP executive director Linda Selk-Yerges who distributed 30 copies to her staff and board of directors at the Fond du Lac non-profit that aides victims of sexual assault. Neither the superintendent nor the principal has contended libel or inaccuracy.

If our children can not learn the practice of responsible press at Fond du Lac High School, then where? If our children can not learn to grapple with the most challenging issues faced by their generation under the guidance of intelligent and experienced advisers like Matthew Smith, then where? If our children can not provoke thought, encourage discussion, arouse public concern and action among teenage peers and parents through the school paper, then where? How can we expect to graduate our students to undertake the responsibilities of citizenship and adulthood without the practice of a free and responsible press within their high school and their community? Where are they to learn those responsibilities if not under the guidance and instruction of our educators, without the restraint of administrative prior review? Where may our children learn critical thinking, collaboration, communication and creativity more effectively than in the exercise of responsible journalism as demonstrated in FDL High School’s Cardinal Columns?

The FDL Board of Education must review the policy 9.1052 established in 1988 which has continued a 100-year history of free student press and encouraged thoughtful discussion. The Board must reassess the value of First Amendment practiced daily in Fond du Lac’s community. The Board must reexamine the un-American act of prior review and prior restraint as promoted March 10 by “School Guidelines Determined by the Principal regarding Student Publications.” Indeed, it is the Board of Education that establishes an educational climate through policy; the Board must reaffirm its faith in its educators like Matthew Smith and its youth like Editor-in-Chief Tanvi Kumar and the staff of the Cardinal Columns. It’s time.

All the negative attention drawn to the Fond du Lac School District can be changed to a positive by the Board of Education returning the district to its previously defined policy before Superintendent James Sebert and Principal Jon Wiltzius aggressively suppressed students with prior review. Without the intervention of the Board, their statements indicate censorship and prior restraint as the next course of action for the principal and superintendent, or worse, student journalists may self-censor as they struggle to gain approval from the prior reviewer.

These teens of the Cardinal Columns, this school district of Fond du Lac and this state of Wisconsin need to see adults, parents, superintendent, principal, and most importantly, Fond du Lac Board of Education act to support the education of youth to practice the responsibility of citizens to use the tools of free speech and journalism to address the difficult issues of society within and beyond the school. Here they must grow the skills demanded through Common Core and a free and responsible student press.

FDL Board of Education, it’s time.

Sandy Jacoby, Journalism Education Association-Wisconsin State Director
Kettle Moraine Press Association-President