Remember that, if this was a public school, this is “state action,” which makes it different from anything done by the media or any other private entity. The principal is the government, and the government can’t discriminate between different speech on the basis of content, with limited exceptions. Although schools have more latitude to regulate speech, it’s not unfettered, and this case seems, at least to me, beyond the limit. The kid may not sue–the bad PR may be enough.
From the link in post 18…
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Wow! 
The girl is not suing. I like the way she spoke to the camera. Pretty articulate.
Now I find that offensive. Equating the word “feminist” with obscene or potentially gang related or wanna be hand gestures is just a false equivalency. It reminds me of the equivalency of comparing baking a regular, neutral wedding cake for gay people to icing a pro KKK (hate group) message on top of a cake.
No slippery slope exists that gets you directly from “feminist” to rude gestures.
See, I have no problem with airbrushing the hand gestures (some guys in my high school tried that as well), assuming they were either obscene gestures or gang signs. That probably does fall within the school’s ability to maintain order, etc. But you can’t delete a shirt that says “Feminist” and leave one that says “Spartan,” at least in my opinion. (I don’t know what the other shirts said.) What if the shirt had said “First Baptist Church Annual Mission Trip” or “Vote”?
Again, this is not an issue of the text being offensive – it is not offensive. It is an issue of ownership of the media. Is there a defense to the media in the US who constantly hides texts or cartoons of Muslims? Or the regular airbrushing of plenty of images.
If there is no defense, what is the exact offense of violation here if the issue is a strict airbrushing? What is it? Freedom of speech? Right to protest? Right to be an obnoxious teenager?
The student was NOT precluded to wear the clothing at school or express herself. What rights were violated by editing a picture she did not own?
Fwiw, how about the rights to every click of our keyboard on THIS forum? We own none of them and have no rights whatsoever to control the further editing of our own texts. College Confidential could edit any of your posts and leave a total different “point” for posterity. This right is given to them as soon as you and I signed up!
Should we believe that the school does not have similar procedures in places when it comes to publishing journals, webpages, and the like? Do we really think that the school have to ask permission to print pictures of students in their pages or publications? I think they have this issue covered by the mere enrollment.
Xiggi, we are talking about a public school.
I am going to Berkeley now…the land of free speech. 
This is not the “media” in the sense of the private media. This is state action. The degree of censorship of a student newspaper would be a similar issue–schools can do it to some extent, but their ability to do so is not unfettered. For example, in my opinion, a school principal couldn’t prevent the school newspaper from publishing a letter supporting one political candidate while allowing it to publish a letter supporting the opposing candidate.
Again, the problem is not so much limiting the opportunity for speech, but in allowing some non-offensive speech while prohibiting other non-offensive speech, based on the content. Imagine that a bunch of students in the picture were wearing t-shirts from various colleges, and the principal only blanked out the USMA one because some people are offended by “militarism.” No can do.
To be clear, I have the term media in this sentence “It is an issue of ownership of the media.” as a proxy for the actual material and to describe the ownership of the photo taken. Not the media as I used to describe the censors who mask the Danish cartoons. Different media and an unfortunate choice of words, as one usage is not common.
It makes no difference for my angle in this story. I still fail to understand what rights were violated by doctoring the photo in the discretion of its owner.
Oh,the general area must be lovely this time of the year. Is there a university there too? 
I understand. I would still say that it’s the principal’s action in discriminating between different expressions that is the problem, and that the ownership of the photograph wouldn’t change that.
I don’t know why THAT would be seen as offensive. I thought it was going to be something about the NRA or pro-life or something like that.
What if the photographer pretended that the other expressions were not legible from a certain distance, but that the letters FEMINIST were clear on that black background.
Please note that the “rebuttal” by the editors of the photos was about avoiding a potential backlash to the content. What I am still missing here is what would be the grounds for a potential lawsuit and what rights were violated. I understand that this young activist might be peeved or might have singled out, but I am not sure she has any right to object to the editing of the photo, even if she was the sole target of an edit – which we only can speculate is the case with this photo.
All in all, I still think that the publicity around THIS kind of case is yet another indictment of the stupidity of the media. And the media as in the press! Was there not a story of spilled milk in the cafeteria or something equally trivial to report? I think the PC crowd is really getting beyond all control and relevance.
Because the idea that women are full human beings is very, very disturbing to some people.
The most interesting thing to me as a sociolinguist is that the principal was apparently afraid the word feminism would be perceived as offensive—not that the word itself is offensive, but that some might perceive it as such. I recognize that the word has negative connotations in a lot of people’s minds, but saying it’s likely to be perceived as offensive by members of the community seems to be making a value judgment about the community, and that’s intriguing, to say the least.
I’m also curious where this might lead us. What about specific political speech—would a student with a Rubio or a Clinton logo get airbrushed? Religious messages were also mentioned upthread—would all of them be airbrushed, or just a select set? Is the word *moist/i next to go?
@xiggi wrote:
You’re surmising based on a complete and utter lack of evidence. It’s also completely untrue, given that people can read at least one other shirt on even the low-resolution pictures attached to the news article.
It isn’t PC-ness or anything like that—it’s the right of students to self-expression, for starters, and ultimately the right of government representatives to quash expression. (This is why I referred to Morse v. Frederick upthread, which is a decision that still boggles my mind.)
Seriously, pick something that you see as completely unproblematic—I’m guessing that wearing a Harvard sweatshirt for a school photo would count. Should the word Harvard get airbrushed out because some students might feel bad that they didn’t get in, or because some people might vehemently prefer Yale? That level of stupidity is what the principal and photographer decided to do in this case.
Humm, I think you missed my point, and especially the one about speculation. Did I not use the correct tense?
You are simply “surmising” that the right to self-expression was violated. The student is allowed to wear the teeshirt at school and in any venue she chooses. Again, does she have the right to control how this image is published or used in a school publication. For instance, could she force the yearbook to publish the picture? Could she force the school to let her accept her diploma wearing that teeshirt?
And for the nth time, I am not defending the actions of the editors. I am simply dumbfounded that the “insanely upset” story could get such a traction or even prompt a debate about the legality of the airbrushing. In a country with 99 real problems, do we really think that this is worthy of a picoliter of ink or one pixel on the web?
The debate is not so much about the legality of airbrushing, but about the double standard that the word “feminist” might be seen as objectionable or that girls get sent home for leggings with their back sides covered if the shirt isn’t fingertip length etc. Girls seem to be getting singled out for this administrative bullying and messages that they are not OK in their innate female-ness.
Yes. Small problems added together equal and/or create big problems. Therefore, if there’s an easy fix to a small problem, we should go ahead and fix it rather than letting it languish.
(Also, on a different item: Yes, you said you were speculating, but you were speculating based on very, very false bases, particularly given that there was other text that was visible even in lo-res versions of the picture.)
^ Dfb, can one not rely on the use of the conditional tense to describe what could have happened but without positing it did? I think I wrote “What if the photographer pretended that the other expressions were not legible from a certain distance, but that the letters FEMINIST were clear on that black background.” in that vein, and I would point to my next sentence for the full context.
I think you are overlooking the simple fact that I also used the term “pretended” and as far as I know that term means “professed or avowed but not genuine.”
Should I have added a layer of speculation with words such as “What if they had lied and pretended to not be able to read the markings of the others”?
And, fwiw, I think small problems do have an easy fix to redress this purported injustice!. But I am afraid that my version of an easy fix would be different from yours as it boils down to something that surfaced in the previously mentioned Charly Hebdo saga. Well, not that much the Voltaire by Voltaire but that one of Oscar Wilde:
“I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.”
@xiggi: If you meant that as a distancing thing, it wasn’t clear (to me or others). That said, if the photographer or principal made that claim it’d get instantly blown out of the water, so no chance, really.