Message from the Staff

Welcome to Beverly Underground, a newspaper run for and by the students of Beverly Hills High School. Our goal is to provide students with credible and verified reports regarding the issues that concern them. We, unlike our school sponsored paper Highlights, plan to print stories that are not biased towards the school. Our articles instead focus on the stories the school tries to keep at bay. This is a monthly publication and is open to all students to make submissions. We publish each issue the first Sunday of every month during the school year. This is the first issue of the school year. The next issue comes out November 7th. You can check the left column to see the date that a particular article was posted or changed on. We gladly welcome any submissions by people who wish to have their their issues brought to the attention of fellow students, teachers, and the administration. 

If you have any questions, suggestions, or wish to have your work published, please contact the publisher, Zack Anderson, at publisher@beverlyunderground.org. If you are new to the site, feel free to look at the previous issues by clicking the "archives" button directly underneath the logo at the top of the page.

For legal information regarding other underground newspapers, and for our tutorial on starting and running an underground newspaper, you can go to the Beverly Underground Reaching Out page.

- The Staff
 

Our Mission Statement

Beverly Underground is an independent student newspaper at Beverly Hills High School published to uphold the First Amendment. It is our right to voice our concerns and our mission is just that. Beverly Underground Newspaper is here to serve the students and provide an uncensored forum for students to make their ideas heard. We strive to provide both accurate and balanced stories that may be perceived as either positive or negative. We will publish the stories that concern the students. We do not censor our articles. We report the truth. Beverly Underground Newspaper's quest is to publish stories, editorials, cartoons, photos, commentary, criticisms, and other material throughout the school year. Much of the material we print will be controversial and non-mainstream, but that's why we are here. Any student with an opinion can send us an article and be heard. The power of the written word is great and it is our mission to convey the words of the students.

To quote the BHEF mission statement, Beverly Underground also "wants the best school system that can be built - a system of education that is second to no other in the country." We feel Beverly Hills High School has the potential to attain this goal, but there are many problems that first need dealing with. To address those problems is why we are here.

There have been some people who think we are "anti-school". This couldn't be further from the truth. By exposing problems, our mission is to make the school a better place than it already is by hopefully effecting change. Only when problems are addressed can actions be taken to fix them. We hope that our stories will enlighten the students, teachers, and administrators at Beverly of certain problems that concern the students so that there can be change. Our mission is to help Beverly reach its highest potential.

- Zack Anderson 

Censorship at Beverly Hills High School

      When we first started the site, we felt that Highlights was being censored. Does this mean that the previous principal Ben Bushman was getting an early edition and making his changes, no. Bushman, however, was in the Highlights room nearly every week expressing his displeasure with many articles, notably those pertaining to the oil well, saying that they can’t be printed and that he wanted 100 percent happy and pro-school stories. We feel this was censorship. The fact is that we have yet to see a truly controversial story done about the oil well. Although journalism at the school newspaper Highlights is top-notch, it seems to have a pro-school bias. Does this mean Bushman’s wrath had an impact on the Highlights staff or not, I do not know. What I do know from conversations with the administration, however, is that if Highlights were to print much of the material contained on beverlyunderground.org, the paper would in fact be censored.

      Our slogan is “More Than Just The Highlights”. We have severe respect for Highlights and the entire staff, and we think the staff does a great job finding so many stories and is still able to print a new issue twice a month. We feel Highlights has a staff comprised of some very talented reporters, editors, and leaders. It is therefore disappointing that Highlights refuses to report controversial facts. There are only a very small amount of instances that Highlights has ever reported something that portrayed the school in a bad light. On the other hand, there are countless times Highlights has reported on “happy things” or controversial issues with a conservative approach. It seems that Highlights either doesn’t look for controversy, or if it does report on a controversial topic, it is almost always conservative and biased towards the school.

      Highlights is not censored. But on second thought, what is there to censor in Highlights? There is currently no censorship because there is nothing to censor.

      On the other hand, Beverly Underground has had its share of censorship attempts due to the type of material we report on. It took pressure from the SPLC (Student Press Law Center) and the local media on current principal Dr. Stepenosky before we were allowed to distribute Beverly Underground. Dr. Stepenosky tried to ban our paper on campus, but in the end, Beverly Underground prevailed.