Students in my communication arts classes at South Middle School have discussed the famous Tinker vs. Board of Education case in which the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that students do not leave their free speech rights at the schoolhouse door.
That concept will be revisited by the high court (no pun intended) this summer when it hears the case of an Alaska student who was punished after displaying a pro-drug message at a school event, which was held off of the school campus:
Bong Hits for Jesus
That is the slogan that a defiant high school student named Joseph Frederick fashioned with a 14-foot piece of paper and a $3 roll of duct tape. His goal was partly to get on TV as the Olympic torch passed through his town of Juneau, Alaska, and mostly to get under the skin of his disciplinarian principal, Deborah Morse, with whom he had a running feud.
It worked, at least the irritating-the-principal part. Morse crossed Glacier Avenue to Frederick's position across from the school and confiscated the banner. She later suspended him for 10 days. Frederick, a high school rebel who at the time was fond of quoting Thoreau and Voltaire, said Morse tacked on the last five days when he paraphrased Thomas Jefferson's admonition that "speech limited is speech lost."
The American Civil Liberties Union is backing Frederick, while former Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr is among those backing the school district.
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