Seeking student media with open forum status

We’d love to hear from you if  your student media are open forums for student expression by policy and/or practice.

For student media to be designated as a public/student forum, the school must either: • Have a school board- or administrator-enacted policy stating students make final content decisions of protected speech*, or

• Have a student media-generated policy declaring students make all final content decisions and also indicating/verifying that practice has been in effect at least two years, and there is no district or building policy that directly contradicts that practice. During that time, no adult, including the adviser, other faculty members, administrators or publication boards have dictated or changed content

In both situations, the advisers may, as part of the coaching process, offer advice and comment, but not make final content decisions

* The policy can still limit unprotected speech such as libel, obscenity and substantially disruptive material, but it must give other content control to the students

We are updating our Google Maps of forum schools and would like to include all that qualify. In several recent instances, people sought a more precise number of open forums to show administrators or others that such forums were viable.

You can submit your forum status by going here and completing the information. We will then get back to you with a few additional questions.

To see our Google Maps of schools with reported censorship or review issues, go here.

To report censorship or related issues, go here.