By Danielle Tobb ’17

During the first days of the new school year, staff of Wilson High School’s newspaper, The Beacon, faced an unexpected predicament: the principal, Kimberly Martin, enacted a prior review policy, requiring that the staff to send her all materials before publishing it.

The proposed policy would require the staff to send Martin drafts of articles for the printed newspaper and the online paper. The staff of The Beacon aims to provide students with the most up-to-date information, but the policy makes publishing articles become inefficient.

Shortly after Martin announced her policy to the staff of The Beacon, the students started an online petition, which attained hundreds of signatures. The students additionally published an online editorial reflecting their personal opinions on the new policy.

To say the least, the staff was not pleased with Martin’s actions. In fact, they were livid.

“I was worried that students and writers of the Beacon might not address the boundary pushing stories that we did in the past,” said Helen Malhotra, the paper’s co-editor. The staff believes that the students of Wilson High School will be scared to share their opinions for the newspaper to publish, due to this new policy.

After an overwhelming amount of support for the staff of The Beacon, Martin met with members of the newspaper and explained that she would not remove the policy, but would allow advisors to approve articles instead.

Prior review policies for school newspapers have always been controversial throughout history. Many believe that it is unfair to censor the opinions of students, while others counter that review of articles before they are published ensures that the newspaper remains appropriate.

According to the Board of Education in Montgomery County, principals are allowed to censor content in articles before they are published in the newspaper in order to avoid legal issues. At Sherwood High School specifically, Mr. Gregory has not enacted this policy over The Warrior.

For now though, The Beacon staff will have to find ways to cope with the changes made in the way they produce their newspaper. Hopefully, Martin’s acts will help principals around Maryland decide if the prior review policy is right for their schools.