Midtown announced in an email on May 21 that during the 2024-2025 school year, all personal electronic devices (PEDs) will be banned on Midtown campus. While this policy is focused on phones, the ban will also include personal computers, smart watches, tablets and ear buds/headphones. The implementation of this policy, while limiting distraction among students at school, will cripple the Southerner, as our work is only possible through the use of PEDs.
From 1981 to 2011, Midtown (then Grady) served as an Atlanta Public Schools Communication magnet school. Though the school has since shifted to a STEAM focus, Midtown should not totally abandon this past. Good, unbiased journalism has become increasingly important in our divided society. The Southerner’s legacy of success has stayed strong in representing good journalism today. The Southerner this year was named the All-Georgia Newspaper and All-Georgia News Website at the Spring Awards Ceremony for the Georgia Scholastic Press Association (GSPA). In the past 20 years, the Southerner has won numerous Pacemaker awards, known as the national “Pulitzer Prize” of high school and college journalism. This year, the Southerner also won a Gold Crown Award from Columbia Scholastic Press Association.
The Southerner’s success is rooted in the steadfast dedication of the staff to produce content throughout the day. With weekly story deadlines, the Southerner staff has about 6 days to produce each story. By restricting PED usage during school hours, we believe Midtown’s administration will prevent the Southerner 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 inaccessible on APS chromebooks. Additionally, it is vital to the staff to have access to email, voice recorders and GroupMe to coordinate and conduct interviews. On school computers, journalists cannot access any of these platforms. The school cannot expect Southerner staff to complete their assignments and stories when unable to do their work during the school day. The school’s announcement of plans to crack down on PEDs shows a lack of consideration for the vitality of one of the school’s most successful, and longest lasting programs and pathways.
Every single one of the school-provided chromebooks, which will be the only devices accessible to students during the 2024-2025 school as laid out in the communications from the school, contains a monitoring software known as Securly. Securly provides Midtown with the ability to view each student’s current computer screen, block websites and view student’s search history. This software, when not applied to journalists, is beneficial, as it prevents students from cheating on assignments and being unfocused in class. When applied to Southerner staff, however, it violates our journalistic freedom and security.
Since the 1969 case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the Supreme Court has maintained that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Forcing Southerner staff to write stories on chromebooks opens us up to censorship, surveillance and observation by school and district officials. This violates our First Amendment right by mandating invasive surveillance technology on our coverage by widely reviewing student work. There has already been national pushback of this technology forced on student journalists, notably in the censorship case this year of Gaggle & USD 497 brought forth by high school leadership of The Budget in Kansas, in which the district’s policy was struck down in favor of freedom of speech and press.
To protect the rights of the highest-performing student journalism program in Georgia, Southerner staff members are legally and ethically entitled to an exemption of this policy. By implementing a restriction of PEDs without this exemption, Midtown will be an unfortunate leader in the restriction and censorship of student journalists in the country.
