Bong Hits 4 Jesus

Drug Policy Alliance:

A Juneau, Alaska, high school student, Joseph Frederick, who was disciplined by his school principal in 2002 for publicly displaying a banner that the school claimed expressed pro-drug sentiments.  While off school property at the public Olympic Torch Relay in Juneau, Frederick unfurled a banner in an attempt to get media attention. The banner bore words whose precise meaning remains elusive: "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." Although the banner caused no disruption, the school suspended Frederick from classes for five days for allegedly violating the school's anti-drug / zero-tolerance policy. When the principal informed Frederick of his suspension, Frederick responded by quoting Thomas Jefferson and stating that he was simply exercising his constitutional right to free speech.  The principal, in turn, doubled Frederick’s suspension to 10 days. Frederick sued the school for unlawful censorship, and was represented by ACLU of Alaska.

Nice. Kid stands up for his rights, and the authoritarian principal doubles his suspension. NYTimes.com includes another little detail:

[Principal Deborah] Morse found no humor but plenty of meaning in the sign, recognizing “bong hits” as a slang reference to using marijuana. She demanded that he take the banner down. When he refused, she tore it down, ordered him to her office, and gave him a 10-day suspension.

They were off school property, and she physically destroyed his sign. Good thing she doesn't have a badge, because she would have clubbed his ass, too.

Frederick is now 23 and the case is in front of the Supreme Court. It's attracting attention both for the issue involved and for who is choosing sides. Of course, the Bush administration intervened on behalf of the principal, apparently because it believes whether in Gitmo or a public high school, institutional inmates have no enforceable rights:

The solicitor general’s brief asserts that under the Supreme Court’s precedents, student speech “may be banned if it is inconsistent with a school’s basic educational mission.”

The Juneau School Board’s mission includes opposing illegal drug use, the administration’s brief continues, citing as evidence a 1994 federal law, the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act, which requires that schools, as a condition of receiving federal money, must “convey a clear and consistent message” that using illegal drugs is “wrong and harmful.”

[Principal's counsel Kenneth] Starr’s main brief asserts that the court’s trilogy of [student free speech] cases “stands for the proposition that students have limited free speech rights balanced against the school district’s right to carry out its educational mission and to maintain discipline.”

Mr. Frederick has the ACLU and the Drug Policy Alliance on his side, naturally. What's unnatural is that the Christianist religious right has also taken up his cause:

The groups include the American Center for Law and Justice, founded by the Rev. Pat Robertson; the Christian Legal Society; the Alliance Defense Fund ...; and Liberty Legal Institute....

The religious groups were particularly alarmed by what they saw as the implication that school boards could define their “educational mission” as they wished and could suppress countervailing speech accordingly.

Good thing, right? No. The rightwingers are hoping to get the Supreme Court to hand them a hammer to use to get officially sanctioned religion in the public schools:

[University of Michigan Law School] Professor [Douglas] Laycock said that religiously observant students often find the atmosphere in public school to be unwelcoming and “feel themselves a dissident and excluded minority.” As the Jehovah’s Witnesses did in the last century, these students are turning to the courts.

The briefs from the conservative religious organizations depict the school environment as an ideological battleground. The Christian Legal Society asserts that its law school chapters “have endured a relentless assault by law schools intolerant of their unpopular perspective on the morality of homosexual conduct or the relevance of religious belief.”

The American Center for Law and Justice brief, filed by its chief counsel, Jay Alan Sekulow, warns that public schools “face a constant temptation to impose a suffocating blanket of political correctness upon the educational atmosphere.”

So, I'm torn. Clearly, Mr. Frederick is right.  However, if he wins this case, there is a good chance Christianist teachers and students will use it as an excuse to further turn schools into religious discrimination engines. The assertion that it's Christians who are oppressed turns the truth on its head and feeds far right religious paranoia. And the statement from the Christian Legal Society shows they want to go beyond high schools and impose Christianism in colleges and law schools, too. So, strange as it feels, I agree with Ken fucking Starr, who is arguing the principal's case before the Court today:

“I welcome this outpouring because it will help the court see that it shouldn’t go too far either way.”

Right. The facts of this case are (1) legal conduct (2) involving off-campus speech (3) not in any way condoned or encouraged by teachers or school officials. That means it should not be a precedent for, say, teachers and students praying together during class and ridiculing or threatening kids who refuse to participate, which is the kind of thing that really happens today.   

Comments

[Aquagirl]

I don't really get how a case about public speech off school property unrelated to school in any way even addresses the issue of in-school speech, which has always been treated like a different subject anyway. I believe the ACLU has defended the rights of religious students to meet, pray, whatever, on school property. Personally, as far as student-initiated (clubs, meetings, not mandatory assemblies) stuff goes, let everybody do what they want. It avoids the issue of the environmental club having to show a "balanced" view on global warming if they want to show Gore's film.

And if these folks think this has anything to do with what happens at law schools, they have been taking bong hits for Jesus.

[Douglas Laycock]

When teachers and students pray together and ridicule nonparticipants, I am on the other side. I represented the parents in Texas who successfully objected to opening high school football games with prayer. But kids who want a prayer club after school, which no one is forced to attend, or kids who want to distribute religious leaflets, have the same free speech rights as everybody else. The government's argument in the "bong hits" case that schools can define their own mission and then suppress all student speech inconsistent with that mission threatens the free speech of all students, whatever they believe. Your post comes dangerously close to saying let them suppress all speech rather than protect the speech that annoys me.

[The Barefoot Bum]

"However, if he wins this case, there is a good chance Christianist teachers and students will use it as an excuse to further turn schools into religious discrimination engines."

I don't see how they could do so.

I think the Christianists do have one righteous point, in that a win by Principal Morse would set a precedent allowing school officials to suppress religious expression *outside* the school. As much as I'm an anti-religious atheist, I'm also a committed political secularist, and this case goes directly to secularism.

[Mithras]

Douglas-
First of all, thank you and congratulations on winning the Sante Fe case!

Your post comes dangerously close to saying let them suppress all speech rather than protect the speech that annoys me.

Nah, I am just saying I do not look forward to the task of pushing back the inevitable overapplication of the rule that will result from this case. In no way do I think Mr. Frederick should lose. Nor do I think any of the student-initiated stuff you cite is troublesome, except when and if it becomes a pretext for favoritism (such as the downstate Delaware case in which Bible Club members went to the head of the lunch line).

Bum-
I think the Christianists do have one righteous point, in that a win by Principal Morse would set a precedent allowing school officials to suppress religious expression *outside* the school.

This is a purely theoretical concern as applied to majority religions. As for minority religions, they're going to get the Wiccans via other means of attack rather than punishing their speech directly.

[The Sarcasticynic]

Maybe the kid should claim he left off part of the sign. It should have said, "Bong Hits 4, Jesus 9."

[Karen Finley]

Go to http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula .

[Dr BLT]

The following song was written and recorded by conservative psychologist Dr. Bruce L. Thiessen, aka, Dr BLT, who finds himself sandwiched between his anti-drug position and his support for free speech as it pertains to this issue that goes before the U.S. Supreme Court. He is against drugs, for Jesus and for free speech. The tension is of the conclusion of values and the corresponding conflict it brings is something he tried to portray in the song:

Blot Hits for Jeus (The Song)
Dr BLT
words and music by Dr BLT (c) 2007
http://www.drblt.net/music/bongHITS4.mp3

[frank]

Ever since Columbine school administrators have continuously abused their power and authority to censure students and stomp their inherent constitutional rights into the ground in order to conform student bodies into a uniform non thinking herd animal. Our schools will no longer tolerate any student individuality, i.e., spontaneity,creative thinking, or imagination. They wish to neuter our nations students into a non thinking herd animal. Look at the most reent, prohibiting or censuring a high school play about the Iraq war. The students wanted to take a controversial subject and create an atmoshphere for healthy intellectual debate and it has been censured. Our education system is all about control and abuse of power and it is aimed at destroying any student that dares challenges this authority and it will destroy any student that shows any signs of true individuality that is intelligent, creative, or imaginative. Our schools are now producing a generation of non thinking drones! Perhaps high school students everywhere should embrace the 60's generation spirit and learn the power of orgnized non violent civil disobedience when confronting injustice anywhere or when schools violate their civil rights with impunity. martin Luther King once wrote something to the effect that an injustice to anyone has the potential of bcoming an injustice to everyone and it should not be tolerated. High school students across the USA should unite and support each other in organized non violent civil disobedience to stand up for their inherent civil liberties or risk losing them completely.