Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Bong Hits 4 Jesus

A Less-Than-Banner Ruling – washingtonpost.com
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority: “The ‘special characteristics of the school environment’ . . . and the governmental interest in stopping student drug abuse — reflected in the policies of Congress and myriad school boards, including [that of Juneau-Douglas High School] — allow schools to restrict student expression that they reasonably regard as promoting illegal drug use.”

I suspect most adults will agree that it’s best if high school students aren’t using illegal drugs. There’s a problem here, though. In a free society people need a means by which to protest laws that they find unjust. And, while I’m not into bong hits myself, I’m one of the many people who believe the whole “war on drugs” is absurd and a huge waste of money. How could I (or, if I had them, my children) protest what I think is a bad law if I’m not able to unfurl my banner?

Now, let’s be real: the student who put up the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner across from the high school in Juneau, Alaska, was very likely not trying to make a political statement about the “war on drugs”. More likely than not, he just thought he was being funny.

Much depends upon whether this student could reasonably have been presumed to be under the supervision of the principal at the time. When a parent drops their kid off at school, they are giving school officials tacit permission to act in their stead as dispensers of discipline. My understanding is that this particular student hadn’t, in fact, shown up at school on that morning and only appeared at this town event later in the day to unfurl his banner. It’s not unreasonable to assume that the principal had no idea the kid hadn’t been in school, though. In that case, it’s also not unreasonable that the principal would tear down the banner as a “proxy parent” supervising students on a special event outside the school. (Consider, if the students had been on a field trip to a museum 50 miles from the school, wouldn’t most of us agree that it would be appropriate for the chaperone/principal to remove the same banner if it had been unfurled outside the museum?)

The Supreme Court is completely missing the point in my opinion. All this talk about whether the subject of the banner is protected speech really unnecessarily inflates this thing. What if the banner had read “Pray for Peace” or “Stop Abortion” or “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Choice”??

The real question is whether the principal could have reasonably assumed that he was acting in his role as “proxy parent” when he tore down the banner.

I’ve gone back and forth on this thing and, in my final analysis, I find that the principal DID have the right to tear down the banner — but not for the reasons given in the Supreme Court decision. It’s got nothing to do with the subject of the banner. It’s got everything to do with whether the principal had the right to discipline the student for what he (the principal) could reasonably have believed was bad behavior during a school-supervised outing.