Censors

In my junior year of high school I realized that I was a writer. My English teacher, Mrs. Dozier, pushed and pushed me to do better. To find my voice, to be as descriptive as possible, but mostly to be proud of my written words. She was the type of teacher that never gave an A unless she felt the student had truly written to the absolute best of their ability. She never settled for mediocrity and forced everyone of her students to work for their A.

Weeks went by and the highest grade I received on my assignments was a B+. I listed after her coveted A's. And it wasn't until our first assignment of the spring semester that I saw my chance. We were challenged to find a political issue that hadn't already been exhausted by the media (abortion, civil rights, higher/lower taxes, etc.) and argue one side of it. The issue I was destined to write about took a week after we received the assignment to smack me in the face. As editor in chief of the school newspaper, I had been challenged with creating the main story or "the spread" of the newspaper.  Having just attended a conference for high school reporters, and hearing hundreds o personal stories of traumatic childhoods or troubled teenage years, I created a spread entitled "the loss of innocence."

I included 5 stories in which high school students from all over Texas recounted stories from their that emotionally changed them forever. One accounted sexual advances of a father to his daughter, another a story of a boy losing his little brother to cancer, and in the middle of the page, was a story written by me about when I was 13 and I thought I was loved and ended up raped. All the names had been changed to protect the writers and I was the only one who knew the real names so I was only slightly nervous to include my story.

My adviser thought the pieces were powerful and moving so I submitted it to the administration for review. Three days later, I got their edited version and right over my story was a giant red X with a sticky note that said "see me." I immediately walked nervously to the principals office, holding the newspaper in one hand and a note pad for comments in the other.

I sat opposite of the principal, the newspaper spread widely across his maple desk. He gave me a look of complete seriousness, knowing exactly what I came to talk about.

"We can't include a story about homosexuality. Especially gay sex. It's just not appropriate." as he spoke his voice grew quieter and quieter, afraid that someone might hear him.

"So how do we fix it? The paper goes to print today. We don't have time to find a new story."

"Well, why not just keep it heterosexual? Should be simple enough, just change the name; it's already written in first person."

I sat shocked. We could include a story about rape but not homosexual rape. I didn't know what to do or say so I just left the room. Back at my desk in the newsroom, my advisor was pressuring me to send her the final copy of the paper to send to the printer. I knew that if I didn't change the paper, the administration would simply shut us down and there would no longer be a paper but how could I change the story, censor myself because what I had to say wasn't "appropriate?"

I sent the paper with the principals changes. I hated myself for it. I immediately got to work on my paper for Mrs. Dozier writing about censorship in schools and how unfairly students are treated because they're minors. I got my A but the paper still printed the wrong story. Everyone congratulated me on such a moving topic and told me how it really opened their eyes to the situations of others. I took the praise with a sort of half smile, knowing that I had failed myself and gave into my oppressors.

Thinking bak on it, I should have done whatever to took to print the real story. The school would hve done abything to prevet a lawsuit and I probably could have made life easier for other openly gay students. I still hate myself for not standing up to the principal and demanding my rights. But that was five years ago and there's nothing I can do about it now.