Dispatches from the Underground

(essayons changer le monde)

When the last issue of Here Title Place came out, some people remarked to me that we had lost our touch, that we were no longer an "underground" publication, but rather just an anonymous version of the school paper. This got me to thinking, and I wondered "What is it that qualifies a student publication as an underground paper?" Use of profanity? Expressing viewpoints that would have censored by an official school paper? A DIY style layout? Many people who I've talked to about Here Title Place have mentioned that their high school used to have an underground paper or two. For the most part, underground papers exist in isolation, causing a stir within the school for a few months, or even years, but then vanishing. They have no real lasting impact, and leave no legacy for future generations to build on. Rather, there is a cycle, of students constantly reinventing the underground paper, never learning from the mistakes and achievements of those who had gone before them. With this in mind I decide to do some research on the topic. To find information, I turned to the Internet, which is in many ways an medium ideally suited for archiving underground papers. What follows is a report, based on my findings.

Why?

The first question most people ask concerning an underground newspaper is, "why are you doing this?" Many people wonder why students do not simply write for their school's official paper. For starters, there is the issue of censorship. A recent study has shown that eighty percent of American high school newspapers are actively censored by school officials. There have been many court cases fought over this issue, taking as a present the 1969 case of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, in which high school students sued the district for denying them the right to wear black arm bands in protest of the war in Vietnam. From the Supreme court's ruling in this case came the well known quotation "[I]t can hardly be argued that ...students ...shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate..."

Another factor contributing to increasing popularity of the underground paper is advent of desk top publishing and cheap photocopying, which make publishing an underground paper affordable to the average student. The only other thing that is needed is some source of motivation. Many students who start underground papers have formerly been involved in official school papers, but have grown tired of the censorship imposed on them. In the case of Here Title Place, it was our slightly misguided view that the official school paper had become nothing but a mouth piece for the administration that spurned us into action. Another example of this would be a group of high school student in Oregon who were told by a teacher "You can have opinions, but you can't voice them." This was what led them to start their underground newspaper Outside, for which one student would eventually be expelled from the school.

What makes up an Underground Paper?

There are obviously no rules for what kind of content goes into an underground paper. One popular topic is freedom of speech, particularly amongst Americans, who are very big on their first amendment rights. Criticising school administrations and teachers is another favourite of the underground student press. One idea that has been used by many papers is ranking teachers in the same manner they rank us, by assigning them grades on a report card. Stories about students being oppressed by school administrations are rampant, particularly in American schools which are patrolled by security guards. Basically anything to do with high schools is fair game, from student governments to grading systems. A few examples:

Another thing that I have noticed is that some underground papers seem to have a great deal of drug related content. In keeping with their commitment to free speech, some publications will publish anything from medical information about LSD to detailed instructions on how to make bongs, complete with diagrams. There also seems to be a commonly held belief that drug users are oppressed by the man, and that all drugs should be legalized. Of course not all underground papers share these views. Some are more concerned with larger issues affecting society, such as censorship or youth violence. Other underground papers don't seem to really care about the larger issues affecting society at all, instead publish more juvenile fare such as list of ways to disrupt school and advice to how to play wacky pranks on people. Many papers also publish poetry and short works of fiction, in a nod to their innate 'zine-ness. In a related note, check out our the poetry section in the issue.

Trouble with the Man

In the course of my research, I was slightly surprised to find that very few underground papers are distributed as openly as HTP is. Whatever else you want to say about our school, you have to admit that the administration is pretty tolerant of this sort of thing. This is not the case at many schools, where students are suspended for distributing, and sometimes even possessing underground papers. Many of papers have been forced to distribute off school property, or through the mail. Some have even given up entirely on paper based distribution and have made their publications strictly Internet based. Some students have even been warned by the police to stop producing their papers. When a paper is distributed on school property, it is done, for the most part, in a very discrete manner, such as having a locker filled with copies, and giving the combination to selected students.

When students are suspended or expelled, they often take legal action against the school board responsible for their punishment. What follows is an excerpt from a complaint filed by a high school student against the School Board of the School District of Greenfield:

Among the charges brought by the student against the School Board was that "The actions of the defendant in expelling the plaintiff on the basis of the article written by the plaintiff in The Last has violated the plaintiff's right under the First Amendment by impermissible infringing upon the plaintiff's right to speak freely on the subject of computer use and hacking." For this, among several reasons, the plaintiff demanded that his expulsion be set aside, and he be reinstated as a student. Unfortunately, the student has still not been reinstated. The student behind Outside met with a similar fate. In a piece written about his experiences he wrote, "After I was expelled from school, I sued the district... and lost. Now, everyone is saying how they were 'Vindicated' in their pursuits for justice and denying me mine. That's fine. They beat me because they have more money and more power in my community." Though it might seem like students have no way of defending themselves against such attacks, they do have allies. Often the local media will come to the aid of students who are unfairly punished for expressing themselves. Civil liberties groups, such as the ACLU in the United States, provide resources in helping students defend themselves. In many cases the official school paper will come to the aid of their downtrodden counterparts, reflecting a shared love of journalistic freedom, though I can't see that happening here at the Woodlands.

The End

The underground paper is by its very nature, short lived. Most students remain in high school for only four years, or five if they reside here in Ontario and plan to attend University. Many papers die when their founders graduate, and within a few years are no longer remembered by any students at the school. Some die more abruptly than that, due to a loss of interest or a lack of funds. Some are forcibly killed off by school officials. Others are stopped by their own publishers, for reasons such as one student explained, "I realised that my 'zine did nothing but espouse hatred among people. Everyone just bitched about the popular crowd, how the student government is nothing more than a popularity contest and now they have to look out for the little people, and basic underlying tone was that everyone owed the writers something. The teachers owed them an education and fair treatment, their peers owed them respect and the administration owed them the right to live without being persecuted for looking different. The underground paper can indeed be self destructive. There is a constant need to "top" previous issues, to retain "underground credibility" by causing controversy, which can lead to crossing the boundaries of good taste and decency. Consider this description of the downfall of an underground paper at McQueen High School in Nevada:

The student in Nevada who was responsible for that paper was forced to transfer to another school, to perform community work, and to write a retraction. If an underground paper does nothing but "trash" a school and institutions within, eventually it will alienate everyone, including its intended audience. More encouraging are underground papers which expand beyond the boundaries of high school into the rest of the world. The line between underground paper, newsletter and 'zine is pretty nebulous and in many cases the labels are interchangeable. In some cases, an underground newspaper can become a 'zine, a publication beyond the criteria of underground papers I have discussed here. Afterall, there's more to life than high school.