(PEN/IFEX) – The following is a 29 April PEN American Center press release: April 29, 1999 Florida Teacher Wins 1999 PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award ReLeah Lent, an English teacher at Mosley High School in Lynn Haven, Florida, has been named winner of the 1999 PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award. Described by her students as […]
(PEN/IFEX) – The following is a 29 April PEN American Center press release:
April 29, 1999
Florida Teacher Wins 1999 PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award
ReLeah Lent, an English teacher at Mosley High School in Lynn Haven,
Florida, has been named winner of the 1999 PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment
Award. Described by her students as “a person who inspires others by her
ideas and her actions,” Lent has repeatedly put herself on the front line to
protect her students’ rights to read, write, and think for themselves in the
classroom, school, and the community. She has defied pressure to ban
literary classics, from Shakespeare to Steinbeck; she has defended her
students’ rights to run their own newspaper. In this regard, her efforts
symbolize the everyday struggles undertaken by individuals nationwide to
champion the cause of free expression in their own communities.
For eight years, Lent was the advisor to the school’s student newspaper,
Making Waves, turning it into a “bastion for free thought and ideas,”
according to colleagues and former students. The paper features an
exclusively student-run editorial board with students responsible for all
aspects of the paper’s content, layout, production, ad sales and funding.
Under Lent’s guidance, it developed into an award-winning, open forum for
student expression; the paper won the International First Place Award (1996,
1995) and International Second Place Award (1994) from the Quill and Scroll,
University of Iowa, First Place (1995-1996, 1996-1997) and Outstanding
Editorial (1996) from the American Scholastic Press Association (1996), and
the All Florida Award (1997) from the Florida Scholastic Press Association.
In May 1997, the principal of the school withdrew an ad for a gay and
lesbian support group that had been proposed for a forthcoming issue, and on
the last day of the school year removed Lent as advisor because he wanted to
take a paper in a new direction. As quoted in the Panama City News Herald,
he wanted the paper to “focus more on raising school spirit” rather than
probing “negative” stories about school and teenage issues.
With the support of her students and other community members, Lent appealed
this decision to the school board, and when that was denied she filed a
lawsuit in federal district court for the violation of her First Amendment
rights. She also tried to convince the school board to adopt guidelines for
a strong student press rights policy; again the attempt was unsuccessful. On
another front, however, Lent was able to defeat an attempt to restrict the
reading of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men at the school. Ultimately, the school
board agreed to an out-of-court settlement of Lent’s lawsuit in the amount
of $150,000, but she was not to be reinstated as newspaper advisor. She has
subsequently launched a school debate program to offer a new vehicle for
students to freely express themselves.
The annual PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award honors a United States
resident for “courageous and persistent efforts, in the face of adversity,
to safeguard the First Amendment right to freedom of expression as it
applies to the written word.” The award carries a $25,000 cash prize and a
limited edition artwork by the sculptor Mark di Suvero. Established in 1992
by Paul Newman and A.E. Hotchner, the award is administered by the PEN
Freedom-to-Write Committee. The 1999 judges were: Chris Finan, executive
director of American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression; the
Honorable Margaret H. Marshall, associate justice of the Massachusetts
Supreme Judicial Court; playwright Terrence McNally; Victor Navasky,
publisher and editorial director of The Nation, and David Remnick, editor of
The New Yorker. The award will be presented in New York at the PEN Gala, May
12, 1999, along with the 1999 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom-to-Write Awards
honoring Turkish playwright Esber Yagmurdereli and Syrian poet Faraj Ahmad
Birqdar.
