why am I not a First Amendment lawyer? I love this stuff.
It's been half a decade since eight editors of the Ithaca High School Tattler took the city school district to court over claims of censorship and violations of freedom of the press.
But for plaintiffs Andrew Alexander and Rob Ochshorn, the five years have passed very quickly - and, they say, time has not eroded the importance of the issue. ...
... There's nothing like first-hand experience as a learning tool, Ochshorn said.
"We all came to an appreciation of First Amendment rights and our role in maintaining an representative democracy, as well as the role of newspapers and journalism," he said. "It sounds pretty lofty, but our experience through high school brought it down to a terms we could understand."
Alexander, who was news editor and managing editor that year, graduated in May from the University of Chicago. He's now teaching calculus at a charter school in Arizona. It would be clichd to say their work on the paper promoted a sense of leadership, he said. But then, how to describe the monthly workings of the paper's staff? They wrote all 50 to 60 articles, sold all the ads, did all the design work for the 36-or-so page monthly newspaper.
"That ability to run an organization, be in charge of something real when you're 16, 17, 18 years old, had a profound effect on me and rest of the editors," Alexander said.
---The Ithaca Times, 3 March 2010
But for plaintiffs Andrew Alexander and Rob Ochshorn, the five years have passed very quickly - and, they say, time has not eroded the importance of the issue. ...
... There's nothing like first-hand experience as a learning tool, Ochshorn said.
"We all came to an appreciation of First Amendment rights and our role in maintaining an representative democracy, as well as the role of newspapers and journalism," he said. "It sounds pretty lofty, but our experience through high school brought it down to a terms we could understand."
Alexander, who was news editor and managing editor that year, graduated in May from the University of Chicago. He's now teaching calculus at a charter school in Arizona. It would be clichd to say their work on the paper promoted a sense of leadership, he said. But then, how to describe the monthly workings of the paper's staff? They wrote all 50 to 60 articles, sold all the ads, did all the design work for the 36-or-so page monthly newspaper.
"That ability to run an organization, be in charge of something real when you're 16, 17, 18 years old, had a profound effect on me and rest of the editors," Alexander said.
---The Ithaca Times, 3 March 2010