PROTECT STUDENT SPEECH -- EVEN 'UNWISE BONG BANNER

Precedent, Common Sense Favor Student In Supreme Court Case

The 18-year-old high school student in Juneau, Alaska, who unfurled a
"BONG HiTS 4 JESUS" banner on a sidewalk across from his school when
the Olympic torch passed by in 2002 says he was merely trying to
provoke his school's strict principal and get himself on TV.

If that was the goal, he certainly succeeded. The principal did get
angry. Concluding that "bong hits" clearly meant pot smoking, she
crumpled up the banner, suspended the student for 10 days and touched
off a free-speech dispute that's pending before the U.S. Supreme
Court. The case sounds like something out of Ferris Bueller's Day
Off, the 1986 film featuring a wisecracking senior who bedevils the
dean of students. But the court's decision, likely to come by the end
of June, is expected to be an important marker of the limits of
student expression -- one that should be settled in the student's favor.

As any principal knows, kids often say and do things adults find dumb
and offensive; when that happens at school, it's reasonable to
restrict disruptive speech that interferes with education. But the
bong-banner incident neither took place on school property nor
disrupted classroom activity.

Teachers and principals have to make tough calls like these every
day, and their authority extends off campus to school-connected
events such as field trips or football games. Yet the courts have
appropriately set a high bar for limiting student speech: Their
standard is a landmark 1969 Supreme Court ruling that allowed
students to wear black arm bands to protest the Vietnam War, because
students didn't give up their free speech rights "at the schoolhouse
gate" unless their actions significantly disrupted or interfered with
school activities.

In the Juneau case, the school board, joined by the Bush
administration, is asking the court to lower that bar by redefining
"disruption" to mean not just interfering with the educational
environment, but also interfering with the school's "educational
mission." They make a superficially appealing case. The principal
found the bong banner obnoxious and embarrassing, particularly in
light of the school's anti-drug policy, and she saw no reason not to
discipline students for flouting that policy, even off school grounds.

But where to draw the line? How can the court best balance the
principal's need to control her school against students' right to
express their opinions, particularly political or religious opinions?
Several religious groups filed briefs on the student's behalf.

When the case was argued Monday before the Supreme Court, the
justices bantered about what other banners would or wouldn't be
permissible: "Vote Republican"? "Smoke Pot, It's Fun"? "Rape is Fun"?
"Extortion is Profitable"?

They reached no obvious conclusions, and there was no claim that
"BONG HiTS 4 JESUS" was articulate, reasoned or much more than the
nonsensical statement the student intended when he took a slogan he
saw on a snowboard and turned it into a banner meant to anger an
authority figure.

But the line around protected speech is appropriately wide, even when
it's subversive or sophomoric. The student's attorney was on target
when he told the justices that this sort of expression is "the kind
of speech we must tolerate, no matter how unwise it is."

If students don't shed their free-speech rights at the schoolhouse
gate, they surely don't on the public sidewalk across the street from
the school.