All around the world, the United States is known for its freedom and rights set up by the constitution. In “United States Supreme Court majority Opinion,” by Chief Justice Abe Fortas, “United States Supreme Court dissenting opinion,” by Justice Hugo Black, and a transcript radio interview with law professor Catherine Ross it explains that school children were suspended for peaceful protesting and their opinions on the outcome of the court case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District. While all the arguments were presented with evidence, the argument best presented was in the passage by Chief Justice Abe Fortas and in the the radio transcript. This is because of the use of ethos, logos, and pathos.
In this text, the case hinges on whether the students created a disturbance. There was a fear that they might create one, but since they never did, the court held that their self-expression was protected.
Despite their opinions, free speech was a great way in this situation for students to rally together and publically inform the rest of campus of their beliefs. In the school newspaper, The Daily Emerald, CJ Ciaramelle wrote “About 300 students from across the campus community — student unions, Greek Life, the ASUO, the Survival Center, the Women’s Center — showed up at the meeting to protest the Forum” (1). Although the majority of people protested against the forum the right to free speech, it is important because it allows students to make decisions on their own and invite students to do the same.
In 2017 alone, there have been multiple riots born of originally peaceful protests. Students in Middlebury College in Vermont revolted at a peaceful debate with far-right Charles Murray. While Murray tried to reach his building, a mob formed, forcing him and his debate-partner, Allison Stanger, to move to another building (Beinhart np). When Murray and Stanger tried to leave, they and the car they were in were attacked by students. The leftist Stanger was sent to the emergency room because she tried to protect the guest (Fatzick np). In Berkeley, California, students were up in arms, wanting to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking. Their haste to silence a man they disagreed with led to a huge disaster. In the streets, fellow classmates were attacked. One student who supported President Trump was brutally beaten, and an innocent bystander who claimed to be Muslim was assaulted for “looking like a Nazi” (Ramaiyer np). Others were beset upon as well, with pepper-spray, matches, and baseball bats. In total, only one person was arrested (French np). Unless this one person attacked this many people and businesses, it’s safe to assume that dozens of perpetrators have gone unpunished for the crime of hurting a human being! This ‘free speech’ is not protected under the First Amendment. People are hurting other people. Another time Mr. Yiannopoulos attempted to give a speech, protesters rudely barged into the lecture
Numerous times, protests start off as untroubling. In fact, they are beneficial to a certain extent, for they “provide a vent to society and also allow governments to understand better the issues their citizens are facing” (UN News Centre 2012). However, often these protests cross this blurry line and are rendered violent, causing danger to the American people. A recent example of a protest transforming into a riot was the Anti- Trump protest in Portland. These protests started off as being peaceful and allowed the protesters to express their opinions on the issue. However, the protesters eventually became so invested in the matter that it quickly mutated into a riot with people smashing windows, kicking cars, and vandalizing buildings (USA TODAY 2016) .This rapid change from peace to violence is a result of the blurry line between what is considered peaceful and what is considered violent. Due to the few restrictions on both the right to petition and assemble, what is perceived as violent is open to interpretation. More specifically, the protesters may not have deemed that kicking cars and smashing windows was violent; thus, they proceeded with these clearly dangerous activities anyways. Since the unlimited nature of both of these rights leaves a massive gray area in regards to what is
The principal suspended the students until the end of the protest. The Tinker’s sued the School District for violating their freedom of expression right.
The Tinker vs. Des Moines case helped determined and interpret legal rights of young citizens for the first time. A group of students made a decision to wear black armbands to school to support a peace establishing agreement during the Vietnam War. As a result, the participating students; Mary Beth Tinker, Christopher Eckhardt, and John Tinker got suspended for their actions (Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District).The school outlawed and attempted to penalize petitioners for a “silent, passive expression of opinion”, that didn’t cause any commotion (Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist). The parents decided to sue the school for disrespecting the student’s constitutional rights of expression.
In 1969, a group of students filed a lawsuit against their school district claiming that their First Amendment rights were violated because the school district wrote a policy that prohibited them from wearing black armbands in a silent protest of the Vietnam War. Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969) ruled that students are entitled to their First Amendment rights as long as they are not causing a disruption to the school environment. This paper outlines the procedure and rulings in the case as well as other legal rulings that have expanded on when censorship of students is protected in public school settings as well as provides a personal reflection on how such matters can impact my future as a school administrator.
Court Decision(s): The Court ruled in favor of the students. In accordance with the First Amendment, their actions were constitutional. It was not disruptive, nor did it invade other’s rights. However, this did not give unlimited freedom of speech to the students. As long as they continued the “peaceful” protesting without causing distractions, they could continue.
As the First Amendment protects the freedom of speech to all Americans, there needs to be some sort of limit on when students go overboard. There are many different types of speech in which it can cause disruptions in the classroom when teachers and students state their own opinions that don’t always go with what the others agree with. Things such as the place of where they speak these things are affective to whether their claims are legal or illegal on any school campus. When students cause a disruption, even across the street from a school supervised event while promoting illegal drug use like Joseph Frederick did, it needs to be stopped as soon as possible whether it goes against the freedom of a student's speech or not.
One of the first displays of peaceful demonstration were the bold actions of several TSU students who went to went to a local white only lunch counter and held a sit in. The sit ins that took place proved to be most effective at attracting attention of white customers as well as police. Certain later instances went as bold as to get themselves arrested to make a larger statement. For example, when the students weren’t getting enough attention from the police for defying movie theater rules, they resulted to screaming fire or something of
One of the main issues is a student’s right to free speech. This was brought to everyone’s attention back in 1943 in
This was such a bad problem students started doing the protesting they would leave school and go marching which they were doing a non-violence movement this would outraged the police so they would arrest some of the students and beat them with the batons. Some students would stand outside the Supreme Court house just to get some rights which they so many students were getting arrested they would go to jail just for the fun of it and when they got freed they would just go right back in just to prove a point that was hardly going no were and making a point so the teachers risk their job to help they as men would stand outside the court house too but then would be revoked or beaten to get away so the students tried a march one more time they
So a couple kids decided to wear the black armbands to school. The Des Moines school district found out about the protest. Since they created the protest the district made a policy to make the kids remove the armbands. And the students the chose to still wear them would be punished by being suspended. And two of the kids did, Mark Tinker and Christopher Eckhardt so they were suspended. The students felt their first amendment rights were being violated. Iowa civil liberties union went to the family and the American Civil Liberties Union agreed to get involved and help with the lawsuit. And the united states district court ended up siding with the school and the united state court of appeals for the eighth circuit tied in their decision so the school decision stayed as is. The case was then taken to the supreme court. The court’s decision was 7-2 and the kids won the
Forcible removals implemented by the police-obedient to direct orders from officials, are based upon laws of that particular state. Freedom of speech does not mean planting yourself as a seed upon the lawns of a privately owned land, as has been the case for forcible removal of undeterred protestors camped out on privately owned Zuccotti Park. The park protestor’s research must have been poorly done. Most recently, the United Nations has stepped in to say that the United States government is mistreating demonstrators by removing them from protest areas. Incredibly, the happenstance of an event is inviting unsolicited comments from allies in other countries.