Petitioner Frederick Flynt, a 12th grade student residing in rural South Carolina attends Liberty High School. This rural school of 400 students knows Flynt as someone willing to test school policy at his own sacrifice. Describing himself as a “button-pushing anarchist-ish civil libertarian,” Flynt is occasionally getting into trouble with school authorities for furthering his civic engagement with school policy and politics. His keenness for politics and constitutional school policies has led him again into more trouble. During Flynt’s senior year, he was suspended from school for actions deemed in violation of school policy. His suspension was received after wearing a shirt to school with the writing, “the president is a terrorist.” Using their judgment and guidance from the Liberty High School’s dress code, school administrators suspended Flynt for two days after he refused to remove the shirt. School administrators believed that because his shirt said the president was a terrorist the education mission they aimed to promote would be disturbed and that his shirt would promote discrimination or racism. No evidence suggests that a disturbance occurred amongst his peers or faculty as a result of his actions. While serving his first suspension Flynt constructed and attached a 4’x4’ sign that read “Obamerrist” to the back of his car. When he returned to school with the sign attached to his car school officials asked him to remove the sign or remove his car from the school
that student or teachers may not use schools as a platform to exercise free speech and in the case
Have you ever seen someone with a shirt that had a band logo or picture on it? Well a student that went to Hamilton wore a shirt with a picture of a band. The principal suspended him afterwards. The rules stated to not wear shirts with a band picture on it or people will fight about it. You shouldn't wear things that disrupts class and out of school. Ben didn’t break the code and the t-shirts aren’t disruptive. First, band t-shirts have not disrupted class. In the email, they looked like they were about to fight but just laughed and went back to class. Lisa(lunch): It did not show disruption, but instead Lisa was mad at Bobby for singing. Principal: People just don’t care sometimes. Mia: she didn’t take
Censorship cases often bring about debates over students’ first amendment rights. Students’ first amendment rights are important to preserve so that students can not be excluded from meaningful works or literature. It is understandable for the government to design educational plans as a way to get its voice into classrooms, but “the truth-promoting function of the First Amendment provides no reason, however, to question the right of students to explore a variety of ideas and perspectives, and to form and express ideas of their own” (Brown, 1994, p. 30). Schools already place a restriction on religious material or material addressing current political controversy (Brown, 1994).
Using a few points from a Derek Bok essay and a short quote from Susan Jacoby, this paragraph will highlight the First Amendment. Bok, a Harvard University President for 20 years, handled a similar situation as the St. Cloud University President. The presentation of two Confederate flags and then a swastika, aggravated some students who found the symbols
In 1969, three young activists walked into school and were told they could not symbolically express themselves. Without these teens carrying out this simple act of rebellion, students today would lack basic rights in the school place, as they would have no outlet outside of the home to express their views. In order to understand Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District one must examine the history behind the case, analyze the case itself, and evaluate the impacts on modern society.
Citizens in America are born with a various amount of rights. One of these rights include the freedom of speech and expression. However, school administrators have the ability to restrict a student’s expression. The Supreme Court Cases ‘Bethel School District v. Fraser’ and ‘Frederick V. Morse’ gave schools the right for the administrators to discipline children when they see fit. Students should be able to express themselves in any way without fearing that their school administrators will discipline
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.
Over five years have passed since high school senior Joseph Frederick was suspended for 10 days by school principal Deborah Morse after refusing her request to take down a 14-foot banner he was displaying at a school-sanctioned event which read “BONG HiTS 4 JESUS.” Born as a seemingly trivial civil lawsuit in which Frederick sued the school for violating his First Amendment rights to free speech, the case made its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the long-awaited ruling of Morse v. Frederick has finally been released. In a 5-4 split decision, the court ruled in favor of Morse and upheld the school board’s original ruling that Morse was acting within her rights and did not violate Frederick’s First Amendment rights by taking away his
Being in 7th grade, the student did not have full rights, “For example, children have a limited right to free speech. ... However, schools may limit the child's speech if they feel it could harm other students.”( What are the Legal Rights of Children? (n.d.). Therefore, for Guiles to argue that the school was infringing on his first amendment, I feel as if this was not correct. The school had every right, and even more power than that, that could induce a dress code that involved identical uniforms. For example, according to ProCon.org. 2017, “In Long Beach, CA, after two years of a district-wide K-8 mandatory uniform policy, reports of assault and battery in the district's schools decreased by 34%, assault with a deadly weapon dropped by 50%, fighting incidents went down by 51%, sex offenses were cut by 74%, robbery dropped by 65%, possession of weapons (or weapon "look-alikes") decreased by 52%, possession of drugs went down by 69%, and vandalism was lowered by 18%.” The students shirt in question had numerous amounts of potentially provoking, or exposure, to these elements shown to cause problems in schools, and infringed on the other students being exposed to these
In his book, Unlearning Liberty (2014) Greg Lukianoff, President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) asserts that violations of free speech— whether by students, faculty, or administration—will have devastating effects in greater society. Lukianoff supports his assertion by describing cases he has seen throughout his career at FIRE. From administration punishing students to professors getting fired for clearly protected speech. Lukianoff’s purpose is to point out the misguided lessons about freedom that are being taught on campus and to encourage his audience to stand up for freedom on campus. Lukianoff writes in an earnest tone to an audience who recognizes the importance of freedom in America society.
John Tinker, Mary Beth Tinker and Christopher Echardt all attended the same public school. They decided to wear black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War. They were asked by the school to remove the armbands but the kids refused to do so. This resulted in the suspension of all three students. Through their guardians, the scholars sued the school region for infringing the scholar’s right of expression and looked for a directive to keep the school from suspending them. The Tinkers took to court. The Tinkers claimed that they were suspended for essentially expressing their views on the war. They thought this move made by the school
The student held a banner stating |of other students and has a right to stop anything that is causing a |
Some students wanted to protest and “others wanted to march on over to the next school board meeting to demand that students be included in the reform efforts and have votes on major policy issues that involved our conversion to smaller schools. Still others wanted vaguely to “fight the power.”(Koppelman, p. 308-309)
Does a black armband really interfere with education? The two passages answer this. While wearing black armbands, the students of Des Miones Independent Community School District, were suspended one by one. After they were told not to wear them to school. Was their freedom of speech taken, or did they set themselves up for suspention?
One example, of how a government in school district, many students are able to express themselves through what they wear to school, students and teachers are free to speak their minds on public school grounds. They can even wear T-shirts with messages, dye their hair funky colors, and wear jewelry or buttons that make a social statement. But, even with First Amendment protection guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, there are limits in the school setting. And figuring out where the line is drawn is fairly complicated, and more teenagers are facing restrictions as the school’s boards across the country adopt more stringent policies.