Kids Say the Darnedest Things

About ten days ago I got an e-mail from Christopher David, who said he and three friends had been suspended from South High School after they'd posted a Web site critical of the school. By the time I replied, the plot had thickened: The site was still up and running, but David, a columnist at the school paper, had been suspended a second time--and summarily transferred to another school.

The next afternoon David was summoned to the office of South High principal Linda Nelson. "Nelson said that I'm a smart person, so I know why we're here," the 18-year-old senior recounts. "I'm like, 'Well, probably something to do with the SouthHighSucks.com site.' Then they tell me [the poll]'s a death threat."

Learning that he and his accomplices were to receive three-day suspensions for "disrespect and verbal abuse," David left school--and promptly updated his site with a blurb about the disciplinary actions and a link to the First Amendment. That earned him another suspension, and a transfer away from South High.

"It's just crazy," protests David, who says he was blindsided when Nelson told him the poll had been construed as a physical threat. "If they'd been nice about it," he adds, "I probably would have just taken the poll down." Instead, the site remains in operation, complete with a link to the offensive poll, as well as a second poll inviting visitors to vote on whether the suspensions were justified.

I called the Student Press Law Center, a Virginia-based nonprofit dedicated to free-press rights, and asked executive director Mark Goodman to have a quick look at SouthHighSucks.com. Goodman notes that while schools increasingly have been given authority to curtail free speech on their own property, a number of lawsuits have involved students who published Web sites from home, and the courts have almost invariably ruled in favor of those students. The only exception he knows of was a case in which a student had made a physical threat on a site.

"It doesn't seem there's any clear threat there," Goodman observes after scanning the "dead body" poll. He's quick to add that context is relevant--it's possible, for instance, that a student had made threats in the past. "But absent any other information that there's a real threat here, I wouldn't consider this something that legally justified punishment," he says.

Principal Linda Nelson says she was alarmed when she saw the posters, but she concedes her fear that an administrator might be in physical danger dissipated when she looked at the Web site. Still, she and Minneapolis Public Schools attorney Margaret Westin focus on the "threat" when they defend David's punishment. "I'm sure you're aware of the many Supreme Court cases trying to draw that line between obscene, threatening speech that's not protected by the First Amendment and speech that is protected," says Westin. "The threatening and harassing speech that was on the Web site was something that violated our policy and interfered with the educational purposes in the school, made staff people feel threatened, and, in our opinion, it warranted the suspension."

Adds Nelson: "It isn't the existence of the Web site that's the problem. It's that this [poll] continues to harass this person. She felt threatened and very harassed."

Significantly, the school did not pursue criminal charges against David or his friends. Still, David's debacle takes place against a stark post-Columbine, post-9/11 backdrop. As Nelson puts it: "Lots of stuff has happened in schools lately, and there's a general concern by staff people about being safe."

I understand that. And I have an abiding respect for teachers and administrators who work hard to educate our children, in exchange for crappy salaries and little recognition. But to quote my mother, this kind of thing makes me dread the day when the time comes for me to "turn my kids over to the state."