LANGHORNE, Pa. – Here’s a story that should send a chill through every freedom-loving American.

Journalism students in Pennsylvania’s Neshaminy High School are embroiled in an ugly dispute with school administrators about the use of the word “redskins,” which happens to be the school’s nickname.

The student journalists who manage the school newspaper – The Playwickian – recently defied orders from administrators to print in full a student’s letter to the editor that contained the dreaded “r word,” The Morning Call reports.

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The newspaper staff refused and instead printed “an editor’s note explaining why and stating ‘this white space represents our resolve to maintain our rights as editors and our determination to eliminate discrimination,’” according to The Morning Call.

“We all believe that a racial slur like that should not be printed in the pages of the Playwickian,” Gillian McGoldrick, Playwickian’s editor-in-chief, said. “And though it may not be a popular opinion, we believe in our editorial decision” to not print the word.

The controversy goes back to a vote the Playwickian staff took in October to ban “redskins” from being printed in the paper. When principal Rob McGee ordered the ban overturned on the grounds that it violated other students’ First Amendment rights, the Playwickian staff refused to comply “and a law firm jumped into the fray to represent them,” Philly.com reports.

Things came to a head with the June 14 edition of the student newspaper.

When it was discovered the Playwickian staff had defied administrators’ orders to publish the student’s letter in full, principal McGee and other staff members reportedly went through the school confiscating copies of the paper.

The school year has since ended, but the controversy has not.

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Neshaminy school leaders are considering a new policy that would dismantle the school newspaper’s website and integrate it into the district’s website “where administrators have access and final say over what’s published,” The Morning Call reports.

Philly.com reports, “The students said they may sue if the board prohibits them from setting their own editorial guidelines. They’re already on edge, after school officials last week reset the passwords for the newspaper’s e-mail and social-media accounts, effectively locking them out.”

McGoldrick, the Playwickian editor-in-chief, said the staff is “ready” for the “fight.”

This controversy may be local in nature, but it could have ramifications for America’s future.

Student journalists, like the ones running the Playwickian, should be getting trained to be defenders of the First Amendment and free speech rights, not to be members of the p.c. police.

It’s fine that Playwickian staff members don’t like the word “redskins.” That’s their right.

It is not their right, however, to ban the word from being used in the school newspaper. The Playwickian belongs to the school district, not the newspaper staff. That means school administrators – not students – are the only ones allowed to ban words.

If McGoldrick and the other aspiring journalists can’t abide the administrators’ use of the word “redskins,” they should resign their positions, which might possibly deprive the school of a newspaper and win students and community members to their cause.

That’s the appropriate – and effective – way to protest this policy.

But instead, these journalists-in-training have joined with the free speech police. Worse yet, their censorship of another student’s speech is being heralded by some in the media as brave.

If the Playwickian staff represents the future of American journalism, then our democratic republic is in serious trouble.