STUDENTS CAN'T SPEAK FREELY? PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE DrugSense FOCUS Alert #348 - Monday, 2 July 2007 On Monday, June 25, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down their ruling on the case known informally known as "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." High school student Joseph Frederick was subjected to school suspension in 2002 for his display of a homemade banner while standing across the street from school property, albeit during normal school hours. While initial court rulings held in favor of the Juneau, Alaska school district, the Ninth Circuit Court reversed in favor of Frederick. In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that since the school officials might interpret Frederick's message as some form of "promoting illegal drug use", disciplining the student with school sanctioned penalties is appropriate. MAP has already archived over a hundred news clippings on this ruling from across North America. These, and additional clippings during the days ahead, may be found at: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Bong+Hits+4+Jesus (Bong Hits 4 Jesus) Please consider writing and sending a Letter to the Editor directed to the newspaper closest to your hometown. We invite additional consideration of sending appropriate letters to other newspapers which have covered this story. If you elect to write to more than one newspaper, we strongly suggest at least some modification of your message so that each newspaper receives a unique letter. Additionally, MAP has archived a large number of Opinion pieces - most being critical of the ruling - from newspaper editorial boards and columnists, including nationally known writers George Will and Debra Saunders. Most of these opinion items saw print within the past one to three days. They make excellent targets for readers to voice their own feelings about the ruling from the Supreme Court. Letters of 200 words or less have the best chance of print unless otherwise noted in MAP headers. Thanks for your effort and support. It's not what others do it's what YOU do Additional suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism Center: http://www.mapinc.org/resource/ Or contact MAP's Media Activism Facilitator for personal tips on how to write LTEs that get printed. PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER Please post a copy of your letter or report your action to the sent letter list ( ) if you are subscribed, or by E-mailing a copy directly to if you are not subscribed. Your letter will then be forwarded to the list so others can learn from your efforts. Subscribing to the Sent LTE list ( ) will help you to review other sent LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or approaches as well as keeping others aware of your important writing efforts. To subscribe to the Sent LTE mailing list see http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm#form Prepared by: The MAP Media Activism Team www.mapinc.org/resource =.

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