Delaware School Bans Anti-Bush Shirt

From the Progressive:

"I wore the shirt to school, and they told me to cover it up, and I just refused," he says. "The school counselor came to my homeroom and he took me to the principal's office, and I spent all first period arguing with the principal about whether the shirt was appropriate or not."

Truszkowski says the principal admitted to having a personal stake in the issue. "He said he was angry because he had a son and a nephew over there," Truszkowski says. "I said I respected them 100 percent, but I didn't respect the reason why they were over there."

According to Truszkowski, Principal McAllister said he was being disruptive and told him that "some of our rights stop right there when we walk through the school door."

McAllister also called Truszkowski a terrorist and taunted him by saying that he should wear a shirt that says, "I'm a terrorist," Truszkowski recalls.

"Why would I do that?" he says he asked the principal.

Click here for the rest.

No doubt the shirt was only disruptive to self-righteous teachers' and administrators' personal sense of right and wrong, not to the general learning environment. This is a clear violation of first amendment free speech rights as determined in the landmark US Supreme Court decision for the Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District case back in 1969:

A prohibition against expression of opinion, without any evidence that the rule is necessary to avoid substantial interference with school discipline or the rights of others, is not permissible under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Click here for the entire opinion.

Contrary to popular opinion, students' rights do not end when they enter the school building, but given that it's a huge hassle to have to litigate every time the schools violate those rights, which happens often, the de facto situation is that public schools amount to miniature totalitarian institutions. The "disruption" clause found in most public school dress codes is particularly infuriating: even though the Court mandates that evidence of disruption must be produced in order justify suppression of free speech rights, this is rarely done, and students generally allow schools to get away with it.

Even though the schools offer bland lip-service lectures in the classroom on the importance of free speech, the real and more compelling lessons come from students' day to day lives under the strong authority of teachers and administrators: only popular opinions may be freely advocated.

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