Utica High School (MI) Principal Richard Machesky

Rey and Joanne Frances live in a neighborhood directly behind the public school bus depot in Utica, Michigan, a middle-class suburb of Detroit. After Rey Frances was diagnosed with lung cancer, the couple filed suit against Utica Community Schools, the public school district that operates the depot, claiming that diesel exhaust from the buses at the depot contributed to Rey's cancer.

Utica High School junior and student journalist Katy Dean spent much of her winter break working on a story about this lawsuit for the Arrow, the high school's award-winning student newspaper. Dean thought the lawsuit would interest her fellow students both because the suit involved the Utica school district and because the bus depot is located near the high school's athletic fields and an elementary school. She interviewed the Franceses and researched the known effects of diesel exhaust. Approved as "well-written and accurate" by the newspaper's faculty advisor Gloria Olman (an English and journalism teacher with over 30 years experience), Dean's story was set to be published in the March 15 (2002) edition, along with an editorial recommending that the depot be moved to protect the health of residents and students.

The day the issue was to go to press, however, Utica High School Principal Richard Machesky ordered that the article, the editorial, and an accompanying editorial cartoon be pulled from the paper. Later, in a letter explaining his decision to the Arrow staff, Principal Machesky faulted the story for inappropriate use of pseudonyms, hearsay, unidentified sources and "scant scientific evidence,"-all legitimate reasons and, if true, easy to substantiate. Yet Principal Machesky has refused requests to provide specific examples of the story's alleged flaws, thus raising the specter that the story was pulled to prevent embarrassment of the school district. This conclusion is corroborated by what Olman claims she was told by administrators when the story initially was pulled: that the school administration did not like the idea of an article critical of the school district being produced with district-owned equipment. Moreover, any flaws the story contained were not so severe as to stop The Macomb Daily, a local newspaper, from running all of the material deleted from the Arrow.

Unfortunately, censorship of school newspapers is a common part of the high school experience. As happens often in such incidents, Dean's article has attracted far greater attention than it likely would have received if Principal Machesky had not chosen to censor it. Nonetheless, the principal's action is representative of an attitude held by too many public school administrators--that the content of student newspapers should be subject to the personal whims of school officials. Accordingly, Principal Richard Machesky earns a 2003 Jefferson Muzzle.