Three magazines for teen-aged girls—Seventeen, Teen, and YM: Young and Modern—have been pulled from the media center of a Long Island, New York, school. According to a February 13 Associated Press story, Superintendent Paul Lochner removed the magazines from the Hauppauge Middle School in January after a parent's complaint about their sexual content.
The move was unanimously backed by the school board February 10 despite an 4-3 vote to retain them by an advisory panel that included librarian Joyce Sullivan, who told the New York Times, "It makes me wonder why we had a committee in the first place."
Judith James, former president of the Long Island School Media Association, told the Times that the removals would "have a chilling effect elsewhere." The AP said the Hauppauge Teachers Association is investigating a legal challenge.
Posted February 16, 1998.