The high school paper was published as part of a journalism class. The principal at Hazelwood usually reviewed the school paper before it was published, but in this case he deleted two articles the staff had written.

One of the deleted articles covered the issue of student pregnancy and included interviews with three students who had become pregnant while attending school. (There was also an article about several students whose mom had been divorced, however their names were not disclosed in the article.) To keep the students’ identity secret the staff used pseudonyms instead of the students’ names. The principal said he felt the anonymity of the students was not sufficiently protected and that the girls’ discussion of their use or non-use of birth control was inappropriate for some of the younger students.