STUDENTS LOSE ANOTHER CHUNK OF FREE SPEECH

The First Amendment rights of students took another whack last week
when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a high-school
principal who suspended a student for unfurling a banner that read,
rather nonsensically, "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." The 5-4 ruling only adds
to the assault on free speech that continues nearly unabated in
today's political climate. It's more than a little depressing for
those of us who still believe the 45 words that comprise the First
Amendment are the linchpin of our liberties.

Joseph Frederick displayed his banner off campus on a public street
at a school-sponsored outing to watch the Winter Olympic torch pass
through Juneau, Alaska in January 2002. The off-campus aspect is a
distinction that the court majority ignored, focusing on
the alleged pro-drug message. (For the uninitiated, a bong is a
water pipe usually used for smoking marijuana.) The majority ruled
that since Frederick supposedly was promoting drug use, the
principal had a right to suspend him. By that logic, if a
high-school student wrote an essay espousing legalization of
marijuana, he or she could be suspended as well. As
dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, the majority ended
up "inventing out of whole cloth a special First Amendment rule
permitting the censorship of any student speech that mentions drugs."

Admittedly Frederick's banner was a dumb stunt that he hoped would
get him and his buddies on television. It did, actually. But the
First Amendment is supposed to protect dumb stunts involving speech,
or obnoxious speech, unpleasant speech, and especially unpopular
speech. Speech that doesn't upset anyone hardly needs protection, now does it?

Rules that constrict free speech or the right to assemble are
supposed to be content neutral, such as those restricting where
demonstrations can be held, no matter what's being protested. That
means if Frederick had hoisted a banner that said, "Jesus Loves the
Winter Olympics," the principal should have objected and taken the
same actions she took for the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner.

I doubt that would have happened.

One reason I believe so passionately in the First Amendment and that
it should apply to students - especially when they are not on school
property - is that 35 years ago I was expelled from high school by a
principal who also believed his authority to control what I wrote or
said extended beyond the schoolhouse doors. In 1972 I started a
silly little underground newspaper called The Mirror. It contained
no profanity - or references to bongs, for that matter. It
was critical of the high-school administration for, among other
dubious acts, banning "Catcher in the Rye" from the library. Looking
back at the yellowed copies of this four-page, typewritten and
hand-drawn publication, it's painfully obvious it was produced by teenagers.

The principal took immediate exception to our modest sheet, which we
distributed on the only corner of the four-way stop that wasn't
owned by the school district, at the old high school near downtown
Longview. He called me in and gave me a good cussing, and said we
risked getting expelled if our commie publication continued - even
though it was produced and distributed off-campus. We kept
publishing, paying for photocopies out of our pockets, and sure
enough, the cartoonist and I were expelled indefinitely. Frank
already was out of high school, or he would have been booted as well.

My parents were very supportive. I contacted the American Civil
Liberties Union and was referred to an attorney in Athens, who took
the case for free. We filed a federal lawsuit and, a few days later,
U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice issued a temporary
restraining order putting us back in school. Both sides agreed to
tie our case to a similar one from San Antonio then before the Fifth
Circuit Court of Appeals. If those students won, the district would
drop our expulsion. If the students lost, we would pursue a
class-action suit against the district alleging it violated student
rights to the First, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.

The San Antonio students won their suit, so our case was over; we
ran out of money and steam, and quit publishing The Mirror after
four or five issues. I graduated on time, though I finished the last
semester by correspondence so I could work full-time.

A couple decades later, I sat on a panel with Judge Justice at
Stephen F. Austin State University and told him my story. I was able
to thank him in person for putting me back in school and setting me
on a career track in journalism and newspapering from which I only
rarely have wavered. William Wayne Justice is one of my heroes.

Since then, a number of rulings have chipped away at students' First
Amendment rights. It's apparently OK to teach students about the
Bill of Rights, but God forbid we should actually allow them the
rights accorded under them.