The Tinker Tour’s stop at Louisiana State University yesterday involved meeting with students, celebrating the school of mass communication’s centennial anniversary, and the start of The Press Law and Democracy Project . That project has a very similar goal to the Tinker Tour’s — teaching students about their First Amendment and free press rights.

First Amendment education was also a topic brought up at a “round table” discussion Mike and Mary Beth had with student journalists at LSU.

“One of the students, in fact, said…no one in public high school ever taught me to question authority,” Mike recalled. She and the other students felt that they weren’t really taught that they had a right to challenge those in charge.

Students at Denman Junior High School in Mississippi used that right, however, to get the chance to hear Mary Beth Tinker speak. Having found out that only one eighth grade class was going to get the chance, other students signed a petition.

They succeeded in getting spots at her lecture.

And at McComb High School, R.J. Morgan, director of the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association, got a crowd excited about student media — so excited that he had a bigger fan club than even Mary Beth after the event!