According to the U.S. Department of Education, as of 2014, there are 37,100 secondary schools across the country, and of those, 10,693 are private institutions. In other words, students attending over 10,000 different high schools are not protected under the First Amendment—Parker included.

Regardless of whether a school is public or not, students almost universally face censorship issues involving controversial articles covered in student publications. On September 22, members of Evanston Township High School’s student-run newspaper, “The Evanstonian,” were stopped in the halls while distributing their latest issue. Despite receiving a “go-ahead” from the principal earlier in the week, despite their status as a public school securing full first amendment press freedoms, and despite the reporting in question being undoubtedly important for the greater Evanston community, staff members had their papers seized.

“The department chair from the English department came to us and started taking the stacks of papers that the kids were handing out and asked me to come to her office with her,” Executive Editor Katy Donati said. “She explained to me that the paper is going to be revoked and that there were basically higher-ups saying that we had to pull the paper and that there were issues with it.” One of three Executive Editors of “The Evanstonian,” Donati leads the paper alongside fellow seniors Michael Colton and Harrison Witt.

The controversy in question surrounded “The In-Depth,” a regular feature of “The Evanstonian” wherein several staff members extensively profile a given issue. The section, which had previously covered issues such as gender roles and student health, had turned its attention to marijuana—and the school was not happy.

In the following weeks and months, “The Evanstonian” led a fight in favor of uncensored press, speaking before the school board and even contacting attorney Stan Zoller, a member of the Illinois Journalism Education Association Hall of Fame with a background in dealing with high school papers.

“The Evanstonian” was eventually allowed to publish its spread on marijuana after making changes dictated by various ETHS higher-ups and including a disclaimer asserting, “The sale of Marijuana is a crime punishable by time in prison. The Evanstonian does not condone the production, sale or consumption of marijuana products.”

“The U-High Midway” at the University of Chicago Laboratory School faces a different climate from that seen at Evanston Township, since U-High is a private school, its paper lacks First Amendment protections, but nevertheless it enjoys a culture free of prior-review and prior-restraint.

“We don’t have prior-review as a paper, and our administration is pretty accepting of whatever we want to print,” Talia Goerge-Karron, one of U-High’s two Editors-in-Chief said. Karron shares her position with fellow senior Dheven Unni.

Goerge-Karron further stated that the paper has never experienced an instance wherein third-parties prevented articles from going to press, asserting that “across the board,” “The Midway” is free to “print and publish at our discretion.”

Still, “The Midway” often faces challenges in scheduling interviews and securing credible sources. “Getting in contact with the administration is sometimes very difficult depending on what we’re talking about and what kind of issues stories are about,” Goerge-Karron said.

Goerge-Karron additionally classified “certain administrators” as evasive, categorizing their actions as a “subtle form of censorship.” “It’s very difficult sometimes to write stories to the extent where we’ve been told to schedule our interviews three weeks in advance,” she said. “I’ve brought quotes to be verified and had them edited right in front of me which, you know, isn’t journalism.”

Ultimately, Goerge-Karron believes that “The Midway” requires determination and strength to succeed. “I think persistence is key,” she said. “That’s the most important thing.”

Unlike Evanston Township and the Laboratory School, the Latin School of Chicago lacks a traditional print publication. “The Forum,” Latin’s student-run newspaper, is published online twice a month. The digital paper is private, accessible only by password to students and staff – parents, alumni, and other community members do not have access.

“By giving parents access to ‘The Forum’ we believe it would censor us even more,” Olivia Baker, one of Latin’s four Editors-in-Chief said. “We wouldn’t be able to write about things like sexual assault and teen drinking. Our audience is the students, and we want to write for the students.”

“‘The Forum’ is a place where all kinds of opinions, beliefs, and stories can come about in a safe environment and for students to speak their minds,” Baker said. Baker maintains that criticism and debate are a natural part of the newspaper’s existence.

“The Forum” has largely avoided wide-spread issues of administrative censorship and rather faces removal and questioning on a case-by-case basis. “It has not been a big issue this year,” Baker said. “I feel like everyone’s a lot more open to the things that we’re writing about and a lot of the things we’re talking about in ‘The Forum.’”

Baker and her fellow Editors-in-Chief – Eleanor Pontikes, Lauren Salzman, and Will Slater – seek to foster an environment which embraces the unique online and student oriented nature of “The Forum.” “We want our writers to be uncomfortable but comfortable sharing their views on topical issues,” Baker said. “The backlash that we’ve received has been from certain people on certain issues and it’s not our publication being criticized.”

Preston Anderson, the Editor–in–Chief at Beacon Academy’s “The Wolf Street Journal,” tries to avoid anything too political or controversial in the paper. The paper was started just over a year ago by Anderson and his co-editor. “Something that’s a little too political, or something that contains profanity, we’ll censor it because we want to make sure the newspaper is very unbiased,” Anderson said. “We don’t know what the school environment is and how it will feel.”

Unlike other schools where censorship often stems directly from the administration, Anderson and the faculty advisor often censor their own work before publication. “When we started the paper last year, it was in the heat of a very political environment,” Anderson said. “I thought, along with the other co-Editor–in–Chief, that it might be best that we don’t do anything political. Keep it unbiased, so everyone can enjoy a break from politics.”

Unlike “The Wolf Street Journal,” “The Blueprint” at Jones College Prep is not immune from censorship-related issues. Senior Ellie Lawrence, the Opinions Editor for the Blueprint, said, “There have been instances where students were writing a story about something involving an issue between students and administration and when they went to interview administration, administration did not consent that it was being written about and they didn’t really want any light being brought to the subject.”

Despite technically being protected by the First Amendment, the administration at Jones has still requested that certain articles be withheld from publication. “That’s been an issue because it’s hard to figure out what’s a censorship issue or if it’s just the administration protecting their image,” Lawrence said. “It’s been something that we’ve had to grapple with as journalists—we want to talk about truth and the news that’s happening, but we’re being funded by an administration who could take that away, so we do have to listen to them.”

As with other schools, when staff members at Jones are reporting on what could be considered a controversial topic, teachers often ask to see articles before they are published. “We’ve had to say, ‘Look, that’s not really how we do things here, and that’s not a standard practice we take part in,’” Lawrence said. “I think people get frustrated, but that’s just not something we want to do to maintain credibility as a newspaper.”

Lawrence and the rest of the staff recognize that there are some instances in which they as students don’t have the right to report on a story. “I know that we do try to not report on incidents that happen with students specifically,” Lawrence said. “We’ve had two incidents at our school in the last three years of students saying the n-word on social media, and they’ve both been suspended. The time it happened this year it was pretty awful, the whole school knew about it, and there was an announcement, and there was an email sent out to everyone. So everyone was pretty aware of it, and we all felt that it was an issue that needed to be addressed, but we didn’t feel we had the right to cover this story when it was one student that said it. It was kind of a privacy issue and an ethics thing.”