Threatening a lawsuit against her school district was not what Hanna Olson, Editor-in-Chief of Mountain View High School’s newspaper, The Oracle, had in mind for her senior year.

Olson and The Oracle’s former adviser Carla Gomez are threatening to sue the Mountain View Los Altos school district. They claim Principal Dr. Kip Glazer’s involvement with an article about digital sexual harassment before its publication violated their First Amendment rights and California Education Code 48907. Additionally, Olson and Gomez claim that the removal of Gomez and the Introduction to Journalism class constitutes illegal censorship and a violation of that same California law. 

Story censorship

In March, Print In-Depth Editor Myesha Phukan, a junior, as well as three other staff members of The Oracle, started to write an article about students’ experiences with sexual harassment online. 

“We first sourced survivors … before we went to any administration,” Phukan said. “When we were interviewing the administration, [the conversations were] mostly with the principal, our [Mountain View-Los Altos] district wellness coordinator and one of our vice principals to basically get a sense of what the school’s policies are regarding Title IX [a law that prohibits sexual harassment at school].” 

According to Phukan, Glazer became highly involved in the article and visited the journalism class over three times to speak to students and Gomez. 

“She talked about how many schools don’t have journalism programs anymore and how we [The Oracle] are really lucky to still have one as a school,” Phukan said. “To me, personally, it felt a little bit like a threat.”

According to Olson, Glazer continued having meetings with writers saying that, as the school newspaper, they needed to “uplift” the school and how publishing this article would do the opposite.

 “[We were] told this article could have catastrophic consequences [and] a negative impact on our community,” Olson said. “Because I was being told that by our principal, someone who’s regarded within the community as a figure of authority, I too was fearful about what would happen if the article was published in its full version.”

According to Olson and Phukan, the writers felt pressured to cut down their writing even though Section D of the California Education Code 48907 states, “There shall be no prior restraint of material prepared for official school publications except insofar as it violates this section.” Obscene, libelous and slanderous language are all examples of content that would violate the section, which The Oracle’s article did not have. This Education Code stops administrators from cutting down or stopping the publishing of stories. The writers were told to remove details including a student’s experience with being stalked and inappropriate language like “masturbation.” 

Although Glazer was concerned about negative reactions to the article, Phukan said the community was supportive.

“We had a really positive reaction [from the school community] to [the article],” Phukan said. “I remember a lot of the people we interviewed DMing me and saying, ‘Thank you so much for telling my story.’ That was really gratifying to hear.” Phukan said that with the publishing of this article, people in the community felt more seen and were proud to see the school 

see the school newspaper acknowledge students’ experiences with sexual harassment.

“Within the community, everyone for the most part was proud of how we took a difficult topic — and one that’s unfortunately all too common, especially in high school — and wrote an investigative article on it.” Phukan said. 

Removal as retribution

According to Olson, the staff of The Oracle was shocked when Glazer announced that Gomez would be removed as the adviser in April and replaced by Pancho Morris, the school’s drama teacher. 

“[Gomez] really knew all the ins and outs of the business side, the publication side, the printing and all of that,” Phukan said. “Our current adviser, Mr. Morris, was put in a very difficult position and he’s trying to do the best with what he has.”

Through the Student Press Law Center (SPLC), a non-profit group that works to defend press freedom rights of high school and college journalists, Jean-Paul Jassy was appointed as an attorney to represent Olson and Gomez in court. 

According to Jassy, Glazer said that Gomez was removed because she did not have the Career Tech Education credits to be a journalism adviser and was not willing to get these credits. However, according to Olson, there are no CTE credits required for journalism advisers at MVLA schools and according to Jassy, Gomez is in the process of getting CTE certification now. 

SPLC lawyer Mike Hiestand said he thinks it was unjust to remove Gomez and the introductory journalism class.

“It was surprising that the principal went as far as she did in transferring the veteran adviser who had been there for a while,” Hiestand said. “The adviser hadn’t really had any negative reviews or evaluations or anything like that, and then they canceled the introductory journalism class and I think that was because it was being a pain in their [administrators] butt.” 

According to Phukan, Gomez had been an adviser of The Oracle since the 2021-2022 school year and students had become comfortable with her as a teacher. Now that she is no longer advising The Oracle, staff members said there is missing support for the staffers. 

 “I know [I], as well as all of the students in our class, really loved her,” Phukan said. “She wasn’t just our adviser, she was more of a friend and I know for a lot of people she was a teacher that everyone felt comfortable talking to about whatever — it didn’t even have to relate to The Oracle.”

The Oracle’s advocate

Olson said she expected the whole situation to dissipate over the summer. Through SPLC, Jassy reached out to Olson (through her mother Sara Kopit-Olson) saying that he had been working with Gomez and he was willing to represent Olson as her attorney pro bono. 

“It seemed like a situation that was honestly ideal,” Olson said. “I was completely in support of sending the letter [of demands] and potentially having to file a suit if it comes to that, just because I believe that these changes were harmful to The Oracle.”

 Jassy sent five demands to the MVLA school district, including that the school administrators must acknowledge and apologize for censoring the article, Gomez must be reemployed as an adviser. Additionally, the administrators must promise to never censor a student article in the future and must agree in writing to reinstate the Introduction to journalism class for at least one academic year. Finally, the school must provide to Olson and Gomez all communications about the article, Gomez, the newspaper and journalism program under the Public Records Act.

Olson says she is glad Jassy can represent her and Gomez in court. 

“There needed to be justice and there needed to be some kind of reparation, some kind of reconciliation because I don’t think we should let what happened last year just go completely unacknowledged,” Olson said. “That would be doing a disservice to Ms. Gomez, … to the people who worked on that article and honestly to the entire community. If nothing had been done, if no action had been taken, I would feel on a personal level like I hadn’t been doing enough to support The Oracle and to support my classmates and support the program and support Ms Gomez.”

At a standstill

According to Jassy and Olson, the district has acknowledged their demands but there have been no moves to comply with them. 

“We received a response [from a district representative] … saying that the district denies there was censorship because not enough was removed from the article to constitute censorship,” Olson said. “That is the allegation which doesn’t match up with what we see or what Myesha and Renuka [the writers of the article on digital sexual harassment] would say happened last year.”

Because the MVLA district thinks not enough was removed from the article to constitute censorship, Jassy is considering steps that can be taken.

“There’s a real possibility that we’re going to need to move forward with some type of a claim, some type of litigation,” Jassy said. “I don’t know for sure that’s going to happen, but we are seriously considering it.”

Olson said that she aims to forge a mutual understanding between her and the district.

“My hope is that this can go to some kind of mediation, because obviously nobody wants to sue,” Olson said. “The district is outright denying that there was censorship; the response we received is just not satisfactory for us right now. We’re still kind of in the talking stages of what is going to be the next step.”