Free Republic

Student journalists on La Serna High School's newspaper The Freelancer have a track record of tackling serious subjects. Previous issues of the monthly campus paper have looked at such topics as the differences in religions and teen drug use and drug abuse. But the May issue of The Freelancer, in which the staff put a spotlight on teenage sexuality - including a column on homosexuality, a campus sex quiz and a glossary of sexually oriented medical terms - pushed the edgy publication to the extreme in the eyes of some school administrators and parents. In the fallout, the newspaper's advisor...

DID you hear about Mayor Bloomberg's new initiatives for city teens? * Although booze is banned at all school functions, the mayor recognizes that many students will drink anyway, especially on prom night. So, for those who choose to be alcoholically active, the city will provide safe transportation home. Inebriated students who accept this ride home won't be disciplined. * While smoking marijuana is illegal, and students caught with pot in school are suspended and reported to the police, the mayor knows that marijuana sold on the street is often sold laced with other drugs. So the city will provide...

It's 10 p.m. and you should know where your children are. But if they are New York City teens, they could be up to anything, from partying to protesting to sexually experimenting. For a survival guide to adolescence, forget preachy parenting guides that are as out of touch with kids as the ancient authors who pen them. Instead, try "The Notebook Girls," a real journal written by four teens who documented life at Manhattan's Stuyvesant High School from their freshman to junior years. In graphic, emotional and often blisteringly funny entries, Julia Baskin, Lindsey Newman, Sophie Pollitt-Cohen and Courtney Toombs...

Alair is wearing a tight white tank top cut off above the hem to show her midriff. Her black cargo pants graze the top of her combat boots, and her black leather belt is studded with metal chains that drape down at intervals across her hips. She has long blonde curls that at various times have been dyed green, blue, red, purple, and orange. (“A mistake,” she says. “Even if you mean to dye your hair orange, it’s still a mistake.”) Despite the fact that she’s fully clothed, she seems somehow exposed, her baby fat lingering in all the right...

Researchers find it shocking that 11 percent of American girls between 15 and 19 claim to have same-sex encounters. Clearly they’ve never observed the social rituals of the pansexual, bi-queer, metroflexible New York teen. Alair is wearing a tight white tank top cut off above the hem to show her midriff. Her black cargo pants graze the top of her combat boots, and her black leather belt is studded with metal chains that drape down at intervals across her hips. She has long blonde curls that at various times have been dyed green, blue, red, purple, and orange. (“A mistake,”...