Pubdate: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 Source: Daytona Beach News-Journal (FL) Copyright: 2007 News-Journal Corporation Contact: http://www.news-journalonline.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/700 Note: gives priority to local LTE writers Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Marijuana) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Bong+Hits+4+Jesus (Bong Hits 4 Jesus) DISREPUTABLE POLICIES School Authority, Yes; Authoritarianism, No It was a cold January day in 2002 when the Olympic torch was to pass through Juneau, Alaska. Students at a local high school were released from class so they could watch the ceremony. They were not required to attend. Some got bored and left. Some had snowball fights. One, Joe Frederick, an 18-year-old senior who hadn't made it to school that morning, arrived late. Standing across the street from the school, Frederick unfurled a banner that said, "Bong hits 4 Jesus," and hoped to catch the attention of a television crew. He thought the sign was funny and played right into an ongoing debate in Alaska about marijuana and drug legalization. The school principal didn't think it was funny but a contradiction of the school's anti-drug policy. She crossed the street, tore up Frederick's banner and suspended him for 10 days. He sued her on free speech grounds The case was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday. The school district isn't even claiming that Frederick's banner was "disruptive." Only that it went against school policy and, as such, the principal had every right to tear it up. But Frederick wasn't in a school assembly. He wasn't on school grounds. He wasn't in a school-sponsored event. The "Winter Olympics Torch Relay" was sponsored by a soft-drink manufacturer and other Juneau private businesses, and it ran through a public street. The school was involved only to the extent that it released students so they could attend. The principal says it was "an approved social event or class trip," yet there were no efforts to keep students from leaving when they got bored. Even if Frederick was promoting the use or legalization of drugs, he was not doing so at a school event promoting the opposite, or during a class on Shakespeare. He was doing so on a public street in the context of a free-wheeling and apparently dull event, to grab attention, and with a relatively innocuous message. Between zero-tolerance rules and minimal tolerance for any behavior that doesn't toe the line, schools have already reduced their campuses to such regimented environments that the only expression allowed seems to be whatever the school endorses or whatever messages advertisers choose to put up. Student speech is a distant afterthought. If the Supreme Court extends such school authority beyond schoolhouse walls to wherever students gather in any capacity even tenuously involving schools, then a lot more than free expression is being lost. Students' autonomy -- their personal freedom, their right to be and do what their school might disapprove of -- will be lost, too. In exchange for what? Controlling the words and behavior of young people to that extent -- words and behavior that disrupt nothing but merely question -- doesn't promote educational values but fear and obedience. That's good in an authoritarian society molding submissive citizens. It's repugnant in a society that claims to be molding free and independent citizens. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake