FROM STUDENT JOURNALIST TO STAFF ATTORNEY FOR STUDENT PRESS LAW CENTER
By Adalia Schafrath-Craig, Broughton High
Sommer Ingram Dean’s Journey Towards Helping Elevate Voices of Student Journalists
Sommer Ingram Dean and the Tiger Times staff were proud of their most recent big story. They had anonymously interviewed and surveyed fellow high school students to learn more about the trendy new “pasture parties” in their hometown of Texarkana, Texas. This news feature went in depth about why these parties were getting so out of control that several people had died of drug overdose at them.
But when they showed their article to the principal for a mandatory prior review of any Tiger Times publications, he didn’t want the story to be published. Even after the Tiger Times staff explained to him that they had worked very hard to tell the story anonymously, he told them they couldn’t publish unless they didn’t mention that anyone had died.
“(This) is the thing that sparked my interest in fighting for student journalists, fighting for young people in general because I saw that a lot of times well-meaning adults just didn’t want certain topics to be discussed,” Dean said, “That’s when I really became aware of the fact that as a young person, we have a lot to contribute to the world, but we may have to fight a little harder to get it heard.”
After this incident, Dean would learn about the Student Press Law Center, an organization that provides free legal service and training to student journalists across the United States from her high school advisor.
However, long before Dean got into journalism, she loved words. Though she was interested in poetry when she was seven, her interest in journalism was always there.
“I continued to explore it in high school and college,” Dean said, “I knew that that love of journalism and the written word and of giving a voice to those whose voices aren’t always heard一I knew that that passion wouldn’t just go away.”
After graduating high school, Dean would go to Baylor University to major in journalism and then Georgetown University Law Center (GULC). After a year at GULC, she would intern for Nina Totenberg, one of the legal affairs correspondents for the National Public Radio (NPR). While there, Dean would further develop skills crucial to reporting on legal and Supreme Court stories, which she had first learned at GULC. Dean now works as a staff attorney for the Student Press Law Center (SPLC).
“A big thing I’ve learned in this job that as a former student journalist myself I already knew is that student journalists face all the same issues that commercial journalists face,” Dean said. “But then there’s the added pressure of the fact that you are reporting on the communities that you are living in, that you are going to school in, and the added burden of having administrative pressure or censorship sometimes.”
Recently, debates over yearbook content have been spreading. Claims of unbiased reporting are used to get rid of Black Lives Matter spreads in yearbooks. In response, SPLC and two other national scholastic press associations have put out statements in the past year to commend student journalists for their work.
“That statement was really just meant to serve as solidarity to student journalists, to let you guys know, and to let the greater public know, that covering a story, like Black Lives Matter一that’s part of the mission of the yearbook一to cover all newsworthy stories,” Dean said. “And to ignore something as historical as this, something that has rocked our nation the way that it has, would be irresponsible and, sort of, anti-everything that good journalism should be.”
Dean and the SPLC are hoping more states will pass New Voice legislation or student freedom of expression laws to take the power away from school officials to censor the work of student journalists.
“Our whole goal is to support student journalists, to uplift your stories, to give you the encouragement and advice that you need to be able to practice great journalism,” Dean said. “I really see journalism as a way of elevating voices of people whose voices may not otherwise be heard. I think it is important because students have a different perspective than the rest of adults that are out in the world. I think that it’s important not to rely on outside voices to tell stories that are really affecting you guys personally as young people, as people who are living and working in this very unique environment.”