No Free Speech at Schools?

I've just been teaching this concept to HS froshies. Tinker v. Des Moines, the first case you learn in every introductory journalism class in America. You don't lose your free speech rights at the schoolhouse door, UNLESS it would cause a substantial harm to the educational process.

We'll find out how that works this week, when my school's paper has not one, but two editorials about LGBT issues (DADT & bullying) and another calling out a newly-elected school board member and I'm the freaking adviser.

 

Let me amend that. I'm against any infringement upon Freedom of Speech that doesn't threaten the safety and security of another person. Going behind the president with a picket sign isn't safe, while protesting against your alleged raper doesn't endanger anyone.

 

OK.

Do you think the student should be allowed to stand behind the teacher while the teacher lectures and carry a picket sign saying, "This lecture is fucking bullshit."

 

This also was the back story by Selena Roberts in last week's SI.

 

OK.

So you get metal detected before going in and the Secret Service will keep a strict eye on you. All you are going to do is stand with a picket sign saying, "Where's the birth certificate?" the entire time, during the State of the Union address. There is absolutely no threat. You just want to exercise your rights to free speech. After all, you argue "against any infringement of free speech."

 

Maybe the alleged rapist feels endangered.

 

What if the rapist wore a shirt that said, "I raped that bitch who sits in the second row of science class, and I got away with it. Boo-yah."

 

Since the whole purpose of cheerleading is to provide vicarious sexual thrills for the manly studly football and boys basketball players by stationing bouncy young babes on the sideline shaking their booties for the glorification of the sweaty young studs, it's a little disingenuous for her to go out there (and her parents to allow her) after the alleged attack.

If it was MY daughter,

a) she never would have been out there in the first place, she'd be participating in a real sport,

b) if despite all that the same events had transpired, I'd lay Jock Studley out with a shovel, if not a 30.-.06.

 

Yet another example of the fact that the dumbest fucking people in the working world today are employed as school district administrators.

Idiots on Parade.

 

You do raise a fair point. I also wonder why the hell she would want to be a cheerleader under those circumstances. But if it is something she had done for a long time, I also can see not wanting to give it up. Giving it up just lets that kid take one more thing from her (this is all assuming her story is true, of course).

 

Glad to see Starman Justice is alive and well.

 

If your teachers indeed used the phrase "free speech stops at the school door," that's pretty awesome, considering that down to the wording, that's almost the exact opposite argument used to rule in favor of students Tinker v. Des Moines, though that decision has been narrowed several times since 1969.

Justice Fortas, in the majority opinion: "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. This has been the unmistakable holding of this Court for almost 50 years."