Speech in the classroom
   Sometimes childish antics can lead to dire limitations of rights for students around the country. When Joseph Frederick, a high school student in Juneau, Alaska, held up a banner calling for “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” outside his high school, he intended to provoke a response from his principal, according to a CNN broadcast.
    The principal, predictably, responded by suspending him, a punishment Frederick appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. In a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that the principal was within her rights to censor students’ speech when it involved pro-drug messages, even though Frederick was off campus when he displayed the banner, according to CNN.
    The court ruled that student speech cannot be disruptive, lewd or advocate actions that interfere with the school’s missions or policies.
    The impact this ruling will have is still unclear, according to UC-Berkeley journalism professor Lowell Bergman. “It’s always been difficult for minors to do what they want or say what they want due to the nature of the law,” Bergman said. “As a minor, you’re not a fully vested citizen.”
    School policy may also limit teachers’ freedom of expression; sometimes the limits are reasonable while other times, teachers face punishment for minor comments.
    When students asked elementary school teacher Deborah Mayer of Indiana whether she supported a recent local Iraq war protest, she responded that she honks in response to bumper stickers that say “Honk for Peace.” This statement alone led to her dismissal after parents complainted. The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the principal was within his rights to demand that Mayer stop all political commentary. The Supreme Court refused to hear Mayer’s appeal in January 2007.
    This dismissal of Mayer’s appeal — a request for the right to express her views on the broad topic of war, not the war in Iraq, Afghanistan or any other country currently under controversy — does not bode well for the future of free speech. Mayer’s voiced her comment in a mild, constructive manner that promotes classroom discussion, one of the foundations of a solid education.
    Voicing political opinions in the classroom may take two distinctly different forms, according to social studies teacher Alex Schwarz. “If the goal of voicing opinions is to force the students to think on their own, then that’s good and educational,” he said. “But if the teacher’s goal is to force students to agree, then that’s terrible.”
    Union building co-representative and social studies teacher Kenneth Tray agreed that sharing political opinions can be an important educational tool. “It’s beneficial for students to hear one’s well-thought out, usually personal view,” he said. “When teachers do (voice an opinion), they’re not only adding a certain spice to classroom discussion, they’re modeling the principle of political toleration.”
    In the San Francisco Unified School District, teachers have not faced problems such as Mayer’s, according to Schwarz. “Anything we can justify in an educational context has been approved by the Board,” he said.
    Clearly there is a fine line between sparking classroom political discussion and unduly influencing students’ opinions. But it is a line that should be expressed and acknowledged in law and courts. Classroom discussion should not be limited to mundane, non-controversial topics because teachers fear complaints.

The printed word
   “We print the truth.” The New York Times’ slogan has never been more ambiguous. What exactly is truth anyway, and how do student journalists convey their interpretations? To Thomas Benjamin, a student at Carlton J. Kell High School in Marietta, Georgia, the truth is that homosexuals are victims of reproductive error. Surprisingly, the school’s principal reviewed his Sept. 28 article, “Homosexuality: Beyond the Bible,” and approved its publication.
    This marks a rare case of a principal ruling in favor of publishing a controversial story.
    Archbishop Riordan High School’s principal removed a story about homophobia last  year because it did not shed positive light on the administration or the school. According to a comic strip The Crusader ran in response to the article’s cancellation, the administration acted because they “can’t have these ideas brought to the general public; they are simply too controversial.”
    Woodlan Junior-Senior High School encountered similar problems when dealing with an article about homosexuality in February. Newspaper advisor Amy Sorrell was suspended after she allowed publication of a column that advocated tolerance of homosexuals. According to school officials, Sorrell should have notified the principal that the paper was going to publish an article on a sensitive topic. Yet this reasoning seems odd. Is advocating tolerance sensitive and controversial in Woodburn, Indiana?
    On the other hand, when an editorial advocating anti-immigration views was pulled from Novato High School’s paper, the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco ruled that the student’s rights to free speech had been violated.
    There appears to be an inconsistency. Perhaps over-simplifying the issue, conservative viewpoints seem to pass the courts with flying colors while articles advocating more liberal opinions — tolerance for homosexuals, especially — seem doomed to die.
    While high school journalists should avoid promoting violence or other disruptions to school activities, striking down requests for tolerance violates their free speech rights, and points to an alarming trend of avoiding controversial issues that demand discussion.
“In general, there’s a culture of fear now surrounding student journalism,” said Amanda Stupi, KALW City Visions producer and staff member at San Francisco State University.
    While the California Education Code grants students significant protection, principals still sometimes strike against programs, according to Stupi. Principals can “assign teachers bad classes, take prep time away, make new room assignments” and otherwise make life harder for an advisor whose paper publishes articles they don’t like, she said, adding that advisers are often new teachers, who don’t have the protection of tenure and thus have fewer rights.
    Other times, principals simply cancel journalism programs. “Many principals would rather not have a program than have one and have it cause problems,” Stupi said.
    Sailing isn’t always smooth for professional journalists, either. On the executive side, the jailing of reporters like New York Times reporter Judith Miller and jail threats to Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Marke Fainaru-Wada for refusing to reveal sources points to increasing governmental constraints.
    The media’s “main problem is the federal government going after our sources,” Bergman said. “It’s now more difficult to get people to talk to you.”
    According to a Chronicle Washington Bureau article on Oct. 17, the House recently passed a bipartisan media shield bill that would protect reporters from having to reveal their confidential sources in federal courts, further enforcing shield laws in California and other states. But Bush is likely to veto the bill because he claims it could harm national security, according to the article.
    Bush is not the only official condemning speech. The San Francisco School Board condemned conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage’s inflammatory comments about illegal or undocumented U.S. residents. The U.S. Congress voted to condemn the MoveOn.org that ran an ad in The New York Times suggesting that General David Petreaus betrayed the country.  
    Although citizens of the United States can still legally claim the right to free speech, the country is seeing a growing trend of shying away from controversy. From school classrooms to talk shows, controversial opinions are getting shut down, robbing Americans of the chance to learn through discussion that provides many points of view and insights. While some comments may seem inflammatory and even false, stifling them is a step on the path toward a crackdown on all controversial thought, which we cannot afford to have in a place we call a free country.