What can I say? In this time of war, high school students are facing ever-stricter limits on their First Amendment rights, especially if their opinions aren't patriotic.

• Author: Nagourney, Eric
• Position: National

IN ANDREWS, TEX., THERE'S PROBABLY NEVER A GOOD TIME for a writer in the high school newspaper to describe President George W. Bush as a "buffoon."

Andrews is in West Texas, about as conservative a patch of territory as you can find in the United States. It's a 45-minute drive from Midland, hometown of a certain American President. But 18-year-old senior Lane Haygood did not let that stand in the way when he wrote a column attacking the Bush administration, especially its military and foreign policy.

"So far," Haygood wrote, "we are yet to be invaded by a foreign power, though if Bush keeps this harebrained presidential policy-making up, I may just welcome an invasion with open arms."

The timing was uncannily bad. The school newspaper, The Round Up, hit the hallways of Andrews High School and local businesses at about midday Sept. 11, only hours after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing thousands.

In the following days, at the order of school officials, every copy of The Round Up that could be found was confiscated, both in the school and in the community. The high school principal, Mike Rhodes, wrote a letter to the local paper apologizing "with humility and embarrassment" for "the irresponsible use of our school newspaper." And Haygood was denounced by many in the community of about 10,000 people, with some calling him a traitor.

The incident is one of many since Sept. 11 where freedom of expression in high schools has come under fire. It is a precarious right in the best of times, but it has recently come into conflict with a growing intolerance for unpatriotic outspokenness, and even an insistence on conformity. Nationwide, some students are learning that during a time of war, what they say, do, or wear--whether in opposition or support of the war--is being looked at with closer scrutiny.

"There seems to be, in a time of national trauma such as this, a grasping for simplicity and a putting of security over anything else," says Paul McMasters, the First Amendment ombudsman for the Freedom Forum, a free-speech advocacy group. "The problem is that this goes against what we say we stand for."

School principals say the competing demands of their job often force them to make tough calls. "Most principals want kids to have as much freedom of expression as possible," says Bill J. Bond, a principal in Paducah, Ky., who is active in a national principals' organization. "But on the other hand, the main purpose of...