When The Principal Controls The Press

by Katie Zavadski

Two intrepid high school students in Michigan, Madeline Halpert and Eva Rosenfeld, tried to combat some of the stigma against depression by using their positions as managing editors of their school paper to write about the struggles of others. They even went so far as to get consent forms signed by the parents whose names they would include in the piece. Yet their principal, like so many others, blocked them from publishing the article (NYT):

As we were putting the stories together, the head of our school called us into her office to tell us about a former college football player from our area who had struggled with depression and would be willing to let us interview him. We wondered why she was proposing this story to us since he wasn’t a current high school student. We declined her suggestion. We didn’t want to replace these deeply personal articles about our peers with a piece about someone removed from the students. After we asked her why she was suggesting this, she told us that she couldn’t support our moving forward with the articles.

From an administrative perspective, this made some sense. It is her job to protect the students to the best of her ability. She believed that the well-being of those who shared their experiences — and most important, their names — would be put at risk because of potential bullying. She also mentioned that she had consulted a mental health professional, who told her that reading about their own depression could trigger a recurrence in some of the students and that those who committed to telling their stories might regret it later.

Our school has a very tolerant atmosphere, and it even has a depression awareness group, so this response seemed uncharacteristic. We were surprised that the administration and the adults who advocated for mental health awareness were the ones standing in the way of it. By telling us that students could not talk openly about their struggles, they reinforced the very stigma we were trying to eliminate.

I’m not certain that this is any better than those who ban books from school libraries. To be sure — there’s a wide maturity and experience gap between a 14-year-old freshman and an 18-year-old senior. But high school students, in my experience, are remarkably capable of rising to the challenge and treating any number of sensitive topics with grace. Unfortunately, in my few years as a counselor at a summer camp for high school journalists, I’ve heard far too many stories of principals refusing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I only wish Halpert and Rosenfeld had named names.