My first session - I can't believe they asked that!

Okay, so here I am at my first session. Came in kinda late, but it wasn't really my fault; we had major laptop malfunctions. I'm still having issues with mine, but mainly because it's going so excruciatingly slow.

The first thing I've noticed upon walking in was that WOW I was late. The speaker, Bill Mitchell, was already well into his speech. When he paused to have people ask questions abvout their school, he came right over to me, shook my hand, introduced himself and brought me up to speed. Either he did that with everyone in the room, or it was the laptop I was setting up. It makes me looki like someone important, I just know it.

So the idea is to ask a few questions about your own school, anything, as long as it's interesting. I have a few right off the top of my head, of course; I go to Tampa Bay Tech, and there are lots of things I'd like to know. Why are our vending machines always being vandalized? Why is our school so much dirtier than, say, Chamberlain, where I got for night school? And finally, why are the APs picky about what they will and will not allow at school? Why is it okay to leave during lunch and go to McDonald's, but it's not okay to wear an anime shirt with a suggestive theme?

I could tell many others shared my basic sentiments. One student asked where the money in their school was really going. Another asked if a male teacher be more likely to send a girl down to the office for dress code than a female teacher. I can definitely relate; being naturally female myself, I can't help but be painfully aware of all instances of gender discrimination. There's another question; why are our sports teams continuously segregated based on gender? Do they honestly think that's fair?

Mitchell then asked after a while for questions that we thought we wouldn't get real answers to, and one astute Catholic schoolgirl wondered out loud about why a girl could be pregnant and attend their school, but not married. Joe Humphrey, man of the year, asked another great question: why do so many students go to school with low expectations? Why don't they care about bettering themselves or their situations? This is a question I've often wondered myself.

Mitchell told us to think about which questions would have answers that would lead to the most interesting stories. I've already noted a few here, and I think my own would make for some interesting articles...

Mitchell asks about our journalistic duty to report on these stories, and this is when I realize I had definitely picked the right session. The students start talking about the rumor of a teacher having intercourse with a senior every year. Do journalism students have a journalistic duty to investigate and report on this rumor, and to find out why? If the student's over eighteen, would it still be illegal?

A student asks about what they do when they do a great investigative story, but it's censored. She was referring to a story on what the APs were doing while the students were in class. The principal had it cut because they said it was slander.

Mitchell responds by talking about how people can become so afraid of breaching that 'red line', that they start severely limiting themselves and begin what he called 'self-censorship'. He said that you have to find a way to break past the 'self-censorship;' line and find a good balance. Also, if you do end up having a story cut, have a plan or some ideas place or at least some ideas on how to get around the censorship if you think the story needs to be published.

All in all, it was a great experience. I love breaching the 'red line'; I practically live for it. This was a very entertaining session, even if it wasn't that informative. It basically gave me a bunch of information that I could have already gleaned myself from common sense.