Students love to talk about our school’s journalism programs and what they produce. The school’s yearbook has won awards to show how popular it is. The pictures in that yearbook are from hardworking and passionate people who love doing what they do.

A similar student from Flower Mound High School in Texas is on his school’s yearbook staff and is passionate about sports photography. Anthony Mazur is a student who loves what he does and wants to make a life out of it; however, this chance to show off his photography was ruined by his high school.

Mazur went to San Antonio, Texas, where the Texas Association of Journalism Educators held a conference for school’s journalism classes. He went to a class during that conference and learned some new information that he didn’t know before: the person/author who takes a photo or writes a story owns it and can sell it. At the end of the class he asked the speaker if it was still true even of he used a school camera, and the speaker said yes.

After that, Mazur was inspired to show off his own work proudly and sell it to parents, athletes, and other sports newspapers. Mazur made his own Flickr webpage to display his work that he did for the school’s newspaper. One day that was abruptly interrupted when the principal pulled him out of class. His principal told him that he did not own the pictures, and posting them was an invasion of the students’ privacy; he also threatened Mazur with an in-school suspension if he did not take down his Flickr page with the pictures.

Carrie Faust, journalism adviser at Smoky Hill and national Journalism Education Association board member and member of the Scholastic Press Rights Commission said, “The principal’s claim about invasion of privacy is ludicrous. The events he photographed were public. There is no expectation of privacy. Freelance photographers and those associated with newspapers attend high school events all the time and take these shots. Would the principal assume those people had no right to do so? I think not.”

Now Mazur has a Flickr page that describes what he is going through with his school and the school district. The hashtag #IAmAnthony has been going around on Twitter in support of Mazur’s right from Title 17 of US Copyright Law being taken away from him by his school. Mazur has also been in his local news talking about how his work is like his own art.

“I actually don’t think this case has anything to do with the copyright law,” Faust said. “Say you had to write a short story for your English class. Through the course of the assignment, you wrote and edited your draft using the school Chromebooks during class. After you turned it in and got your grade, you decided to submit it to the ‘New Yorker’ magazine. They loved it, decided to publish it and paid you for it. Would the school somehow have rights to your story? Of course not.”

Explaining that the school’s property wasn’t the one who wrote the story, Faust furthers the point that Flower Mound High School should not have claimed Mazur’s pictures as their own.

Recent graduate and Smoky Hill yearbook photographer Matt Jenkins feels the photographs are still Mazur’s. “He gives them to the school,” Jenkins said. “They are his photos, he can do whatever he wants with them.”

Mazur has made several appeals to his school’s superintendent and to the principal and was consequently shut down. Now Mazur and his family are going to try and appeal to the school district board directly. According to some of the local news stations in Texas, the superintendent won’t respond to what is going on or elaborate on the situation.

“I know that the First Amendment protects our rights as student journalists,” Jenkins said. “So I would take it to the board of education and fight for my rights.”

Journalists and photographers have the right to own what they create, whether its with school cameras or computers, or if it’s with personal cameras and other equipment.
“I think journalists everywhere need to address this issue and stand up for what Mazur is going through,” Faust said. “Every scholastic publication should publish an article and then contact the principal/superintendent/school board with the link or a copy. It’s important that he not think he stands alone.”