Haley Stack

WMC Young Journalists Award 2018

Bio:

Haley Stack is 16 years old and a junior at Prosper High School in Texas. She is Assistant Editor of the school’s newspaper, Eagle Nation Online. She started journalism her freshman year and has been on staff since. She also participates on the UIL Academic Journalism team and won numerous awards including an ‘Excellence’ in Commentary Writing at the Journalism Educators Association.

Stack wrote an editorial over the removal of A Separate Peace by John Knowles from the 10th grade curriculum. The article was censored by her principal because he claimed Stack’s story was negative, used the word ‘banned’ instead of ‘removed’, and that the article had numerous grammatical errors. The errors included an extra period and a missing apostrophe. This was one out of three articles that were censored at the paper leading to herself and Neha Madhira speaking out with the help of the Student Press Law Center. Several news outlets covered their story, such as NBC 5, The Dallas Morning News, and The New York Times.

Stack and Madhira continue to fight for student press rights through New Voices, a student-led legislative movement attempting to protect students from censorship and advisers of being pushed out. Stack hopes to continue her fight and further her journalistic education in college.