Lear also said that the opinion pieces are probably legal, but it depends on how the students were assigned the stories. If a teacher made students write about their feelings about sex, the law could have been broken.

But if the students volunteered to write their views, she said, then no laws were broken.

"Could the school have censored this (pro) article?" Lear said. "Probably. But that it chose not to isn't necessarily illegal either."

The principal said Alpine School District attorneys agreed that the November opinion pieces were OK. He now wishes he would have prohibited the paper from publishing the Web address for the Gay-Straight Alliance Network.

Koop also said the students were supposed to meet and match their arguments point-by-point. But they never met, and Graham's daughter finished the con piece first. The writer of the pro piece read the con piece and formulated a response to the con arguments, which may been an unfair advantage, Koop said.

After the November edition of the newspaper, the Grahams visited the principal and student newspaper adviser. They also contacted the district. They did not feel there was resolution to the issue, which is why they went directly to state officials, including the Utah Attorney General's Office, after the May 15 edition.

But Lear, who received a complaint letter and the articles from the Grahams, said that her office's job is to provide legal advice to schools that seek it. She cannot dictate how schools make decisions.

Sam Jarman, a district administrator over Alpine's high schools, said the district is still studying the news story and opinion piece about HPV to determine if it was appropriate to be published in the school paper.

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E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com