Off the rails

The great student-newspaper crisis at Woodlan, which was a case of both sides overreacting, then getting caught up in the fury unleashed by special-interest groups using it as a cause, is over. Students who work for publications at East Allen County Schools will forever be unable to share their wisdom about sex, drugs and other great social issues without adult review. Some people will regard this as a great civil rights tragedy.

They should be happy, at least, that any student journalists who want to protest such heartless treatment will now be able to do so at 2 in the morning, after making their way through the drunken drivers, crack addicts and other assorted nocturnal threats:

Until last year, when a new version of Indiana's curfew law was adopted, it was no crime for teens to hang around in a public place at any hour.

Constitutional challenges have taken the state's curfew law on and off the books three times since 2000, but Indiana's latest law won't be challenged by civil rights groups because it includes protections for youngsters' First Amendment rights.

And this just in:

Two ominous messages written on restroom stalls this week at Leo Junior-Senior High School led to an early weekend for students.

The first message made reference to blowing up the school, while the other alluded to the April 16 Virginia Tech massacre. School officials called in the Allen County Sheriff's Department which brought three bomb-sniffing dogs to the school Friday. After about a 40-minute search, officers determined no threat existed.

Still, news of the second message, written in marker and saying “VT will happen here,” had spread so widely by Friday morning that the school's phones were flooded by worried parents.

Somewhere along the way, we seem to have largely abandoned the idea that it is adults' responsbility to teach young people, to guide them, to protect them. And we mutter and shake our heads and wonder why things went off the rails.