COLLEGE STUDENTS' RIGHTS COULD BE UNDER ATTACK

Would anyone like a bong hit for Jesus? Does anyone even know what
that means? If you're unsure, then you're not alone: even the U.S.
Supreme Court isn't sure what to make of it.

In January 2002, the message "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" was unveiled on a
14-foot banner by a high school student named Joseph Frederick along
an Olympic torch route in Juneau, Alaska.

Frederick was suspended from school for 10 days because of his
actions, although he was not on school property and was not in
attendance at school that morning.

Frederick sued the school principal and his case has gone all the way
to the Supreme Court, where it was heard a little more than a week
ago.

There is a lot at stake with this case. The First Amendment rights
given to high school students by the 1969 Supreme Court decision in
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District, for example. The
court's ruling said students' First Amendment rights "do not stop at
the schoolhouse gate."

If public high school students' First Amendment rights are taken away,
then state university students' will be next.

Since the Tinker case, there have been attempts to limit the freedom
granted high school students by the Tinker ruling; many of them
successful. One of these attempts wound up limiting college students'
First Amendment rights as well.

In 1988, the Supreme Court ruled in Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier that high
school newspapers could be subject to review by teachers and could be
censored based on content, given a "legitimate educational purpose."

In Kentucky there is a precedent set by the Federal Court of Appeals,
denying Hazelwood and protecting our First Amendment rights as college
students.

In three other states, college students are not so lucky: Hazelwood
applies equally to both high school and college students in Illinois,
Indiana and Wisconsin.

If the Supreme Court denies Frederick his First Amendment rights, then
it will weaken the Tinker precedent again and make it much easier for
a future ruling to deny college students their right to free speech.

On Sunday, Mary Beth Tinker spoke to 50 people at a fundraiser for the
American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky. She spoke about the
threats to high school students' First Amendment rights and said
students need to be more aware.

In 1965, Tinker, her brother and another high school student wore
black armbands to school as a peaceful protest of the Vietnam War.
They were suspended from school and the ensuing court battle ended
with the Supreme Court decision upholding Tinker's First Amendment
right to non-disruptive free speech.

Last week, Tinker attended Frederick's case before the Supreme Court,
but she said it was unclear which way the court would rule. She
mentioned one particularly chilling moment during the argument of
Frederick's attorney, Douglas Mertz.

Mertz was arguing that violent acts or speech encouraging violent acts
could and should be stopped by school officials, but non-violent and
non-disruptive examples of free speech should be protected. Justice
Antonin Scalia interrupted to call Mertz's argument
"ridiculous."

But Frederick has support from nearly every corner of the political
map. Groups ranging from First Amendment advocacy groups like the ACLU
to far right moral advocacy groups like the American Center for Law &
Justice have lined up behind him.

The biggest group to back up the school principal who suspended
Frederick is the National School Boards Association. According to its
Web site, it believes schools must be able to censor students who
"might undermine the core educational mission of schools."

If a school's "educational mission" can be undermined by a nonsensical
phrase displayed along a public street, then that school's mission is
not what it should be.

The goal of our public schools should never be to force compliance and
discourage individual thought; it should be the opposite. We need men
and women capable of thinking for themselves, not mindless drones
sucked dry by "education."

The people who want to censor Frederick are not interested in
improving our educational system; they simply want to censor anything
they find offensive. I think they would censor adults if they could,
but they can't, so they are going after high school students instead.

Those standing against Frederick and his supporters are attempting to
silence a generation. If they are successful, then the censorship will
not stop after 12th grade; it will bleed slowly onto college campuses
across the country.