Gov. Ige signs first bill of 2022 legislative session

McKinley High school English teacher and student newspaper advisor Cindy Reves saw the fruits of her labor pay off Monday when Gov. David Ige signed the Hawaiʻi Student Journalism Protection Act into law.

HB1848, which goes into effect immediately, establishes freedom of speech and press protections for student journalists in Hawaii’s public schools while also protecting teacher advisors against retaliation for refusing to censor students. Hawaii joins 15 other states with similar protections for student journalists.

In a ceremony held at McKinley High School’s auditorium, Ige signed the journalism measure, which is the first bill of the 2022 legislative session to be signed into law, surrounded by those who championed hardest for its passage.

“The First Amendment is a cornerstone of our democracy, and it’s important that we recognize student journalists today, who may become, and hopefully will become the journalists of the future,” Ige said.

Ige lauded the six-year efforts of Reves and her students to get the bill passed, saying “Her support of student journalism has been unwavering and has been ongoing for several years. We applaud the mentorship that you provide to these budding journalists.

The mentorship that the advisors and teachers provide really do allow us to ensure that our students gain the skills that they need to be effective,” Ige added, noting that he was the page-one editor of his student newspaper at Pearl City High School.

Reves has been the student advisor for McKinley’s 101-year-old student publication, The Pinion, for the past 11 years.

“We’re protected, and I think it also makes the students feel a more sense of power to know that this is a law and that they’re protected,” Reves said. “I think it also helps them to understand the responsibility. This law gives them rights, but they have a responsibility. If they have these rights, then they have to practice good journalism.”

Graduating McKinley senior Althea Cunningham, a Pinion staff member for two years, attended the ceremony and celebrated the bill’s passage with her mentor, Reves, and classmates.

“I feel like the work that we did was actually meaningful and I’m so glad that all the other students before us got the closure that their work was not for nothing, that this bill finally passed, and now we can help other schools and other students who need this protection to actually benefit from it,” Cunningham said.

House Speaker Scott Saiki, who introduced HB 1848 said, “I think that this bill would not have made it if it was not for the McKinley teachers and students who fought for it. I want to just thank all of the students for your advocacy over the past few years for working on this. The bottom line is that this bill, this effort from the students, gives us so much confidence in the future of this next generation.”

Reves said she’s feeling “relief” over the bill’s passage and said that now “we have to educate and make sure that all of the schools and all of the advisors understand the rights and responsibilities that we have and our students have.

We need a good press. And to have a good press, you have to have people who have had experience and education and so it’s got to start in the high schools. They have to have the freedom to practice telling real stories, so that they can either become really good journalists or really good consumers of news. They need to understand how the media works. And think about the news that they’re getting and know what goes on behind it,” she said.