The announced device policy has the potential to restrict, censoring a journalism program – Southerner Online

On May 21, Midtown announced in an email that all personal electronic devices (PEDs) will be banned from the Midtown campus during the 2024–2025 school year. While these rules focus on phones, the ban will also cover personal computers, smart watches, tablets and earbuds/headphones. Implementing this policy while limiting student distractions in school will cripple Southern because our work is only possible through the use of PEDs.

From 1981 to 2011, Midtown (then Grady) served as the Atlanta Public Schools’ magnet school for communications. While the school has since shifted its focus to STEAM, Midtown shouldn’t completely abandon that past. Good, impartial journalism is becoming increasingly important in our divided society. The Southerner’s legacy of success remains strong in representing good journalism today. This year, Southerner Magazine was named a Pan-Georgia Newspaper and Pan-Georgia News Site at the Georgia Scholastic Press Association (GSPA) Spring Awards Ceremony. Over the past 20 years, Southerner has won multiple Pacemaker Awards, known as the nation’s “Pulitzer Prize” for high school and college journalism. This year, Southerner also won a Gold Crown Award from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association.

Southerner’s success is rooted in its staff’s unwavering commitment to content creation throughout the day. With weekly story deadlines, the Southerner team has approximately 6 days to produce each story. We believe that by limiting the use of PEDs during school hours, the Midtown administration will prevent Southerners from maintaining this uncensored, consistent standard of success.

All of our stories are written, edited and published through a platform known as SNO Sites, which is not available on APS Chromebooks. Additionally, staff need access to email, voice recorders, and GroupMe to coordinate and conduct job interviews. Journalists do not have access to any of these platforms on school computers. The school cannot expect Southerner staff to complete their assignments and stories if they cannot do their job during the school day. The school’s announcement of plans to crack down on PEDs shows a lack of consideration for the viability of one of the school’s most effective and long-lasting programs and pathways.

Each of the school-provided Chromebooks, which the school said will be the only devices available to students during the 2024-2025 school year, contains monitoring software known as Securly. Securly provides Midtown with the ability to view each student’s current computer screen, block websites, and view the student’s search history. This software, when not used for journalists, is beneficial because it prevents students from cheating on assignments and losing concentration in class. However, when applied to Southerner staff, it violates our journalistic freedom and safety.

From the 1969 case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Charter School DistrictThe Supreme Court held that students “do not give up their constitutional rights to free speech and expression outside the school gates.” Forcing Southerner employees to write stories on Chromebooks exposes us to censorship, surveillance, and surveillance by school and district officials. This violates our First Amendment right by mandating the use of invasive surveillance technology within our reach through broad examination of student work. There has already been a pushback against the technology by student journalists across the country, especially over the issue of censorship this year Gaggle and $497 contributed by the management of the Junior High School Budget in Kansas, where district politics was abandoned in favor of freedom of speech and press.

To protect the rights of Georgia’s most effective student journalism program, Southerner staff have the legal and ethical right to be exempt from this policy. By restricting PEDs without this exception, Midtown will become the unfortunate leader in restrictions and censorship of student journalists in the country.