By Michael Miner
But Stampfler felt terrible. As the adviser to the Bulldog Express for the past four years she’d built a paper that had won top honors from the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association. She’d taught the young journalism students who produced the paper that news was one thing, good news often another. She’d taught them journalism was about telling the truth.
Last week Stampfler, Dan Vagasky, principal Susan Minegar, and the Otsego school district’s director of curriculum tried to draw up Bulldog Express guidelines everyone could live with. Stampfler and Vagasky felt queasy about the results.
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Murphy says Stampfler ran the Bulldog Express as a public forum. “It’s written about gangs, religions, drugs–a wide range of activities.” And he says the school district’s first explanation for repressing the article about the school trip didn’t even attempt a pedagogical argument. “They thought it made the school look bad.”
As for intellectual freedom, materials promoting “ideological agendas” were forbidden.
Whose side is Jamie Leyndyke on? I’ve wondered. Dan Vagasky says he doesn’t know. Stampfler said, “Some friends say she agrees with what we’re fighting for.”
