Censorship Paper Topics Spring 08
1. The Valdosta State University in Georgia ordered student T. Hayden Barnes' expulsion after Barnes protested the proposed construction of a $30 million parking facility by posting a cut-and-paste collage on his Facebook.com site. The president labeled Barnes a "clear and present danger" and mandated that Barnes submit certifications of his mental health and on-going therapy as conditions of his readmission to VSU. (see FIRE)
2. The Seattle (Wash.) Housing Authority banned signs, flags, and other displays on apartment exterior doors in public housing projects. (see First Amendment Center)
3. Grambling State University suspended the student newspaper's operation until better "quality assurance" could be put in place, later required the faculty adviser to review each issue prior to publication, and ordered the paper to take down all its online coverage of an anti-racism lesson taught at the university's elementary lab school. (see SPLC)
4. A 16-year-old student at Spencer-Van Etten High School, N.Y., was sent home because the principal believed her T-shirt -- which read "gay? fine by me" -- would spark a disruption by prompting anti-gay responses. (see SPLC)(Nicole Riley)
5. Norcom High School in Portsmouth, Va., threatened to suspend a 17-year-old senior because a teacher was upset by her lesbian pride T-shirt, which bears an image of two overlapping female gender symbols. (see ACLU)(Jaclyn Cosgrove)
6. St. Louis Community College at Meramec, Mo., placed a student on disciplinary probation and found him guilty of hazing and several other offenses because he e-mailed other students about his plans to withdraw from a course and invited them to join him in taking the course at another college. (see FIRE) (Lisa De Stefano)
7. A West Lafayette (Ind.) High School sophomore received an in-school suspension after she called an administrator an "ass" on a Facebook group site formed to support another student who had been suspended after an altercation in a computer lab. (see SPLC) (Justin Smith)
8. Officials at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, removed a student art display intended to symbolize the Tree of Life and featuring a tire swing and seven ropes. Administrators called the art offensive and threatened disciplinary action against the student artists. (see ACLU)(Monica Cruz)
9. A Chesterfield County, Va., high school art teacher was fired over paintings he produces and sells on his own time. He uses his buttocks and other parts of his body to transfer paint onto canvasses and lost his job after a video of him demonstrating his technique surfaced on YouTube.com. (see ACLU) (Beth West)
10. Saying it had the right to block "controversial or unsavory" text messages, Verizon Wireless rejected a request from Naral Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights group, to make Verizon's mobile network available for a text-message program in which people could sign up for text messages from Naral by sending a message to a five-digit number. (see ACLU) (Marcus Lyle)
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