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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 17104
[Civil]
Date Posted:
1/19/2007
12:33:55 pm EST
Wvox Stats
Views: 8,302
RSS: 18,318
Comments: 7
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‘Flag’ Photo Sparks Free-Speech Feud
Author: Dave Orrick Source: Pioneer Press (MN)
Title: PHOTO SPARKS FREE-SPEECH FEUD
The picture is of a scene in the fall play at St. Francis High School, The Children's Story. The high school's principal has banned the student newspaper from running the image, which shows a character destroying what appears to be a U.S. flag. It is actually bunting.
The spectacle of the girl destroying the Stars and Stripes was there for all to see.
First it was onstage, in a school play. (It wasn't really a flag, but it looked like it.)
Then a photograph of the scene hung for weeks in a hallway of St. Francis High School in the northern Anoka County town.
But when the school paper, the Crier, tried to publish the picture, the principal censored it. Now the editorial board of the Crier is crying First Amendment foul.
The school district superintendent is defending the decision, saying the photograph could be offensive.
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Community Thoughts: There are 7 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Very Gravely Mistaken | Jan 20th. at 2:59:24 pm EST
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Llunmere (Germantown Hills, Illinois) - Email Me
A school-sponsored newspaper must be censored according to the local public decency laws of the area. They effectively are permitted within reason to restrict first amendment rights of students when it comes to publications on school property.
How do I know? I wrote in my high school newspaper and took a high school journalism class in which our teacher carefully explained that free speech is null and void when it comes to school property.
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| Case Dismissed... | Jan 20th. at 10:49:40 am EST
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Lorca (Longview, Washington) - Email Me
"The school district superintendent is defending the decision, saying the photograph could be offensive."
Offensiveness is not, per se, grounds for censorship. Indeed, the First Amendment was drafted specifically to protect speech that one or another individual or group might deem to be merely "offensive".
Next case...
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| Perhaps The Real Reason | Jan 20th. at 9:51:40 am EST
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William (Pictou Landing, Nova Scotia) - Email Me
they want to ban images showing what resembles a tattered, broken and divided American flag is that it reminds them what kind of condition and direction the U.S. is heading in by ripping away the rights and freedoms of it's citizens on a daily basis?
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| Nothing New | Jan 19th. at 4:18:04 pm EST
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Crow Odinsson (Suffield, Connecticut) - Email Me
I remember over 40 years ago, protesting the high school dress code that prohibited wearing jeans to class. We tried reasoning with the administration, getting support of parents, letters to the editor of the local newspaper ( if such things exist any more) but nothing worked. Finally we organized a civil disobedience day, in which students would wear jeans to class with prior notification of all the officials who would be charged with dealing with this. The catch was that we had already recruited 90% of the football team to participate. The moral is that sometimes it's who is involved that makes a difference.
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| Which Ammendment.... | Jan 19th. at 3:08:11 pm EST
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Opus the Poet (Garland, Texas) - Email Me - Web
Has the right to not be offended? Offensive to some people includes almost any statement, or visual. I am offended by pictures of puppies that are intended to be "cute". Does that mean I can deny the publisher of the 365 puppies a year calendar the right to publish dais calender? No. I am offended by street preachers getting in my face telling me I'm going to Hell if I don't "Find Jesus". Does that give me the right to prevent them from preaching? Only as it relates to getting in my face, the right to get the message out does not include the right to interfere in other's right to travel.
Opus
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| Mindless Vatican Robots | Jan 19th. at 1:42:16 pm EST
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Terry (Irvington, Virginia) - Email Me - Web
The style of manipulating subjects by dictum that declares certain speech or practices "offensive" to others is a long standing Vatican practice, so grossly incompatible with the diversity of current Western societies, and civil rights laws of the USA, as to rightfully deserve classification as child abuse when depicted as a role model as these school officials have done, or indoctrinated in kids as parents, church officials, or school administrators acting as these have, too often do.
Allegations that arbitrary religion, culture, art, or politics based ideas or speech are "offensive" as if by some universal factual standard is simply a fraud. How these school officials have acted is "offensive" by a specific relevant standard, that of violating the rule of law as government agents. That's a relative comparison, but one which has a uniform defined basis within this country and its current Constitution, unlike alleged political perceptions which are not based on the speech itself, but on personal reactions of viewers combined with prior indoctrinated or otherwise developed triggers. To cause in others for whatever economic, political, or malicious reasons, or to retain oneself, triggers of this type based on perfectly legal exercise of highly protected rights of neighbors amounts in our societal context to being a psych pathology, which schools in loco parentis have a need to mitigate when students bring it in from outside sources, and an obligation to avoid causing by their own actions.
This kind of pathology is so widespread as to be a very difficult challenge to overcome, and one which often is the rationale used to promote mob tyranny over civil rights issues used not just by large religions, but often by pagans attempting to adapt to defective aspects of our society, as if justification of their abusive actions. It's a pattern which needs to be recognized for what it is, and even if historically common or convenient in some contexts, treated in our current society and legal system as illegal child abuse when done by schools or against kids by misguided parents or churches, or merely predatory fraud when done toward or at adults.
It would likely violate labor laws, but would be only fair otherwise to freeze Superintendent Saxton and Principal Neubauer's salaries for a period three times longer than that until the censored photo is published in the intended issue of the school paper, including forever if applicable, and to force them to personally pay damages to the paper's staff, and all students at the school, denied their rights. A legal wrist slap just saying "bad dogs" to those officials, and some wrangling over new policies designed to impose illegal prior restraint over speech content at the risk of additional litigation issues, might not teach the needed lessons to corrupt officials.
If this issue makes funding of needed schools more difficult, so be it. Convenience to government officials is not among their rights, nor authority to coerce, when doing so requires violating citizen rights.
If these school officials thought they'd quietly suppress legal speech, at least they're having a chance to be taught otherwise. It's a kind of community standards thing after all, that government officials are required to uphold the rule of law, and deal with any controversy or differences of perception or opinion which result from so doing.
You never know what bright, motivated students might do. Back in my high school days, at a private school not restricted by law so much as ethical pressures to adhere to high academic standards, five of us who had mostly been editors of the school paper founded an actual student paper to focus on issues the school didn't like seeing covered, and in part to be noticed more strongly by donors and Board members. They looked for grounds to expel some of us, but couldn't find any. Our ringleader was Chris Hedges, and that experience was very risky for him. He has numerous war stories, including about a $10,000 ferry ride to escape as a journalist POW in Iraq-1, about the financial real reasons for invading the Balkans as if civil rights, etc., as a NY Times foreign bureau chief, and more recently books investigating both military and Christo-fascist religious issues, while others from that gang also have worked both within institutional systems as as dissidents in years since. If anyone runs into Chris at a book signing, ask if he remembers the NY street handbill we published alongside our actual paid ads, for a useful academic resource, "The Library, 7 Beautiful Librarians to serve you". Minnesota public schools might particularly enjoy seeing students prompted to develop the full range of text, photos, editorial cartoons, and parody jabs we printed once we decided to do the work of publishing. They would be hard pressed by that example to claim producing a NY Times world leading reporter and author, among others behind the effort, was anything but an example of academic accomplishment.
Public schools are often used not primarily to educate learning process and basic academic skills, but to indoctrinate unquestioning compliance with institutional authority. That is fundamentally at odds with the needs of responsible citizenship, albeit valid challenges to authority require more developed abillities to distinguish defects in organizational standards and systems from simple personal preferences than many people ever refine. One of the important roles of the ACLU is to educate and assist students in recognizing the difference between rights violations and mere personal style conflicts, and to take action when the former is present. A streaming video and cable TV series called "Freedom Files" is now available as part of that effort, as a stream from www.ACLU.tv National Coalition Against Censorship's Youth Free Expression Policy Project is another quality effort in that direction. [Web LINK] yet another is the Urban Dictionary, a wiki-like project initiated by a bright, motivated student who ended up an ACLU client litigating speech rights. [Web LINK]
Sometimes, it's the students who reverse roles, and find themselves teaching adult authorities overdue lessons.
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