15-year-old Richard Edmond is the editor of Le Sabre, his high school’s newspaper. For the Valentine’s Day issue he tried to raise awareness of violence against women with a lead story about the play “Vagina Monologues.” Splashed across the front page under a hot-pink headline reading “Have a Happy Vagina Day!” was a labeled diagram of a vagina.
Grover Cleveland High School administrators seized all remaining copies as a potential disruption to the school stating that this is a high school, not Hollywood Boulevard. Student journalism obviously has educational value but this issue apparently crossed the line of acceptable writing. Editor Edmond was quoted as saying that “On Valentine’s Day, more date rapes take place than on any other day of the year.”
Did Le Sabre cross the line in appropriate student journalism? Could the issue of violence against women be approached without the theatrics? Or does shock have value in generating discussion of a serious subject? Let us know what you think - thanks.
I go to Cleveland, and it’s a very liberal school. I’m surprised the administration made such a big deal out of it as they did.
Personally I believe the paper did the right thing. Honestly, I don’t think most kids would have even read the article without something attention-grabbing.