In yet another incident of students vs. school, two Central York students are protesting – in court – their punishment for hacking into the school district computer. According to the article “Students fight suspensions� in the York Daily Record on Nov. 22, the students were suspended for several months. Their attorney says the punishment is too long – longer than school district rules allow.
Interestingly, the attorney brought the Constitution into the debate: He argues that the punishment “violates [the students’] constitutional rights of due process and their statutory rights to attend school,� according to the article. The article also quotes the school board president as saying, “This is a student disciplinary matter, and those are highly confidential.�
I don’t have the details, so I don’t know which side is correct. If I had to decide how to punish the two students, I would give them more work to do, not let them take a vacation. ...
But some students might classify that punishment as “cruel and unusual.� The stupid thing is that people might listen.
I do not recall learning that the bill of rights contains 11 amendments: the original 10, and one extra, to protect the rights of public school students. When they’re in school, students just don’t have the same kind of rights as are guaranteed to U.S. citizens by the Constitution.
The Constitution lays down the structure of the federal government – it says nothing about how schools are to run. But there is a tendency today to extend the Constitution’s meaning beyond what the Founding Fathers meant. For example, “promote the general welfare� does not mean “erect a welfare state.�
Public schools must meet the standards of the federal government and obey the state’s laws on education, but the school board and the local community run the schools. For the students, school government is a dictatorship: students do not decide anything. They don’t know how to decide. Students go to school to learn from the teachers and the school administration; students aren’t the teachers.
Schools can exercise their dictatorship over students in ways students may not like: If the school board decides to punish you, you don’t threaten a lawsuit. That’s childish. Either your parents pursue your case through the means of redress set up by the school and community, or you submit to punishment and learn from it. Only if you’re sure you’re being severely wronged should your case go to court.
Plenty of schools have school uniforms; is that a violation of freedom of expression? The government can’t stop schools from making students wear school uniforms. It’s not the government’s place - the school is the authority here. And if they can impose school uniforms on students, schools can certainly perform the lesser task: forbid students from wearing clothes deemed inappropriate.
The most ridiculous thing about the Spring Grove hazing incident was that the student council threatened to go on strike – as if they were employees. The students on the council thought the school was treating them unfairly: The school had told the student newspaper not to write about the incident, and some students were not allowed to wear clothing pertaining to the incident.
Students ought to be happy they have school newspapers in odd times like these, in which lawsuits abound. The purpose of a school newspaper is to teach students journalism and how to write. School papers do not have a watchdog function – students don’t necessarily know how to be watchdogs. So students don’t get to criticize the school administration in the school newspaper. Those waters are far too muddy. Journalists in real newspapers can’t say whatever they want, and neither can students in school newspapers. Students have to understand the responsibility required in journalism.
Of course, schools are also at fault in the student vs. school wars. Suspension for months doesn’t make any sense to me. Do schools really need to keep the newspaper from discussing issues important to students? And the way schools deal with punishing students just seems strange sometimes.
But the Constitution has nothing to do with these problems until someone breaks federal law. As the Central York school board president said, “This is a student disciplinary matter.�
Actually, you're wrong: the Supreme Court's decision in Tinker v. Des Moines said, " Student's rigth do NOT end at the school house gate." This means that students DO have their rights.
I read the decision in Tinker v. Des Moines. I agree with the dissent by Justice Black.
Here's the website where I found the justices' statements:
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/comm/free_speech/tinker.html
Here are some pieces of the dissent. The end of the dissent, which I do not include here, is worth reading.
"The Court's holding in this case ushers in what I deem to be an entirely new era in which the power to control pupils by the elected "officials of state supported public schools..." in the United States is in ultimate effect transferred to the Supreme Court."
"While I have always believed that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments neither the State nor the Federal Government has any authority to regulate or censor the content of speech, I have never believed that any person has a right to give speeches or engage in demonstrations where he pleases and when he pleases. This Court has already rejected such a notion."
"I think the record overwhelmingly shows that the armbands did exactly what the elected school officials and principals foresaw they would, that is, took the students' minds off their classwork and diverted them to thoughts about the highly emotional subject of the Vietnam war."
"In my view, teachers in state-controlled public schools are hired to teach there. ... The original idea of schools, which I do not believe is yet abandoned as worthless or out of date, was that children had not yet reached the point of experience and wisdom which enabled them to teach all of their elders."
Justice Black also said that it was not for the Supreme Court to determine the amount of free expression allowed to students in Iowa.