Symposium lauds First Amendment
INDIANAPOLIS: Munster student's essay a winner at state event

BY PATRICK GUINANE
pguinane@nwitimes.com
317.637.9078

INDIANAPOLIS | Nicole Hong found freedom in the Fourth Estate.

A Munster High School junior, Hong followed her parents from an island off the coast of Shanghai to Maryland, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and, eventually, Indiana. She said the final move wasn't easy.

"After I moved sophomore year, it was really a sad experience for me," Hong said. "Then I realized I could take something positive out of it, and I did so by joining the newspaper staff.
"I was able to realize that I could influence people and I could have a voice in my school despite the fact I had just moved there."

Hong's essay about her experience at the Crier was one of four winners in the Indiana High School Press Association's First Amendment Symposium, which drew a crowd of roughly 200 on Tuesday to the north atrium of the Indiana Statehouse.

"This is a temple of the First Amendment," Gov. Mitch Daniels told the crowd. He noted his administration's efforts to improve public information through the online posting of state contracts and new disclosure requirement for executive branch lobbyists.

"The First Amendment is not a pick-and-choose matter," Daniels said, telling the students they "must be ever vigilant" and "be prepared to be unpopular" in defense of free speech.

The governor also alluded to 2002 federal campaign finance limits sponsored by U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., saying an "old friend" and presidential candidate he supports wrote a law "which I think infringes political speech."

Hong, meanwhile, says she found new freedom in student journalism.

"I could write about topics like gay marriage and teenage drinking and not worry about being suspended from school," Hong wrote in her winning essay. "Freedom of the press hit close to home, and I finally understood why our founding fathers risked everything they had to fight for their freedom."

Also in attendance at Tuesday's symposium were student journalists and the faculty adviser of the Woodlan Tomahawk. Administrators at Woodlan Junior-Senior High School near Fort Wayne demanded prior review of the student newspaper's content last month after a sophomore published an editorial advocating tolerance of gays and lesbians.

This story ran in the March 7, 2007 edition of the Munster Times.