A Horrible Horrible precedent

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/11/BA2N1LU0HC.DTL

A Morgan Hill high school principal reasonably feared violence on campus when he saw a group of students wearing American flags on their shirts on Cinco de Mayo, and he did not violate their freedom of speech by telling them to turn the shirts inside out or go home, a federal judge has ruled.

Okay, I'm okay with a school banning things to prevent violent behavior. But we need to be as shallow as possible in the application of such a policy because when you've set the bar so high you've set the basis for banning whatever you want to?

With this ruling, what prevents a school from banning whatever they want under the guise of preventing conflict. Or to put it another way, what's to prevent a principal in Alabama from sending a kid wearing an MLK Jr shirt home on Confederate Memorial Day, or making Muslim students not wear anything conspicuously religious on 9/11?

Because I'm just blown away that a school in America would ban an American flag during a foreign holiday.

Comments

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

(http://photobucket.com/images/thats%20racist)

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Then it sounds like the school should have banned the Mexican holiday celebration and sent home any student celebrating such a debauched day.

[soliloquy76.livejournal.com]

It's such a minor Mexican holiday, too. It's barely celebrated anywhere in Mexico except for Puebla.

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

It's not exactly as simple as students just happening to wear American flag tshirts on that day, they purposefully wore them to make a point and to escalate already existing racial tensions in the school. So if I were the principal it would be less about what they were wearing and more about why. And he was absolutely right to do all he could to defuse the situation.

A story like this comes up every year it seems. It would be very nice if we could all learn that other cultures celebrations are not going to make our own any less special.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

It's not exactly as simple as students just happening to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, they purposefully had the over the top celebration to escalate already existing racial tensions in the school. So if I were the principal it would be less about what they were doing and more about why. And he was absolutely right to do all he could to defuse the situation.

Why shouldn't he have put the kibosh on the Cinco de Mayo celebration since apparently it's causing conflict?

[weswilson]

I don't think it's as simple as that.

Let's create a mythical holiday to avoid all actual allusion. Pretend there's a mythical "Black heritage day" where we recognize the journey from Africa, the troubles behind it, and the growth from those chains. Now, on that holiday, people from school wear "White Pride" shirts... not necessarily because they would normally, but in a direct effort to undermine any positive reflection this holiday might garner.

Disruptive usage of flags and patriotic paraphernalia is akin to the whole "In God We Trust" issue. Anyone who fights against it is fighting with a stacked deck. Even if someone believes in God, saying "In God We Trust" is not a good motto for a country with a seperation of church and state will put you at a disadvantage. Equally, anyone who uses patriotic tools to harass others puts those who would oppose it at a disadvantage. The most objective way to deal with issues like this is remove the context of the messages, and look at who us using their message to harass.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

'...but in a direct effort to undermine any positive reflection this holiday might garner.'

Which the American flag doesn't do.

[soliloquy76.livejournal.com]

When I was in high school, there was one or two instances of violence related to baseball caps. Of course, the reactionary staff at the school decided to ban baseball caps.

Sounds like a lot of this nonsense could be solved by mandating school uniforms. That opens up a whole new can of worms, sure, but choice and/or quality of clothes at school results in many other cans-o-worms. I'll bet you'll see a lot of cliques disappear real quick, for one.

[lilenth.livejournal.com]

Nope, here in the UK we have uniforms, students just formed cliques over what type of bag they had, sports, personal skills excetera.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Considering Morse v. Frederick, this sadly doesn't surprise me at all. When students can be punished by school officials for wearing ambiguously inappropriate* clothing while off campus, it speaks very little to students' rights on school grounds, even though those rights have been protected by case law over the past seventy years or so.

* The school administrators, and Supreme Court justices, who thought "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" was a serious message advocating illegal drug use were obviously smoking something themselves.

[lilenth.livejournal.com]

The battle that Cinco de Mayo celebrates actually played a part in the formation of the USA as it stands today. So there is certainly an argument that American's who are proud of the US today could support the celebration while still being patriotic.

That said, since there was a known history of issues, I fully support what the principal did, with prior race based violence over it, it is likely that those displaying nationalistic symbols would either start or be a target for racial tensions/violence and that is not conducive to studying.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Um, no the Cinco De Mayo had nothing whatsoever to do with the USA of 1862. There was something a little closer to home that had a really big part of what made the USA what it is today going on in that year. I'm sure you've heard of it.

[existentme.livejournal.com]

Ehh, schools are prisons, these days, and not much more, and how much freedom of speech are the US incarcerated allowed?

Sure, I don't like it, though - like I dislike almost if not all rulings that seek to marginalize and silence the political voice of the young, or anyone. To me, that's where the real damage in these things is done. It may not be by design, but it's definitely effective in teaching exactly what they want to teach: stfu.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

I wonder how come the US flag still hasn't been made compulsory in schools. Also the kids should sing the national anthem every day before the first classes, and recite the oath of allegiance.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Because a.) compulsory patriotism is basically fascism and I think even most patriotic Americans realize that and b.) way back in World War II SCOTUS ruled that a student could not be forced to salute the flag and recite the pledge of allegiance, as that violated their freedom of speech.

Of couse, people have been slowly chipping away at it for decades so, in twenty years, who knows? We might be seeing groups of Little July Fourthers goosestepping down Main Street with rifles slung across their backs and waving anti-Mexican banners.

[lilenth.livejournal.com]

Oh and btw, freedom of speech =/= the freedom to do or say whatever you want without consequences or causing a reaction.

The freedom of speech merely means that the government itself cannot censor you if you say something they dislike. It doesn't not mean that if you wear something deliberately to provoke someone, that nobody is going to call you on it or send you home.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

'The freedom of speech merely means that the government itself cannot censor you if you say something they dislike. It doesn't not mean that if you wear something deliberately to provoke someone, that nobody is going to call you on it or send you home.'

Wait, so you're saying the gov't and the gov't run schools aren't in any way connected? Did you really just say that?

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

It wasn't so long ago that an American Flag was to be only an American Flag and nothing else. To fashion one into a t-shirt (or toilet paper) was utterly disrespectful.

the Flag Code relevant to this question are:

The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. (section 8d)
It should not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like (section 8i)
[It should not be] printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes (section 8i)
The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature. (section 8g)
No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform. (section 8j)

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Last year when the kids tried having a flag they were told to put it away... unlike the Mexican flag carrying students.

[raichu100.livejournal.com]

That is SUPER COOL. I wish I could go to a Day of the Dead celebration!

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

I don't see why you have to bring The Precedent into this.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I'm equally blown away by the so-called patriots who defend a battle flag of armed treason and consider treason to be patriotism. War is peace, slavery is freedom, ignorance is strength. The Confederacy's treason is US patriotism.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Oh, hells yeah.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what's going on. I am having a hard time believing how wearing a US flag in the USA constitutes disruptive behavior. How the fuck are the Mexican students taking offensive to that? Are they fine with people wearing US flags during all the other days of the year, or do Mexicans just go ape on this particular day when they see a US flag?

If a certain kind of culture has been allowed to breed in this school where displaying a US flag offends people, then something should be done about that. This story hides the underlying problems of the school and those should be addressed immediately.

[oslo.livejournal.com]

I wish people venting the canned rage over this issue would pause to take a moment to think about how it's been deliberately calibrated to elicit that exact reaction. Like, if the school officials banned the wearing of t-shirts that said, "Mexicans, go home" on Cinco de Mayo, it wouldn't get the Republican media machine going, but because this is the American flag on a t-shirt, well, that's a completely different story. "How can you say that displaying the American flag in an American school on Cinco de Mayo is possibly racist," the Limbaugh's and Hannity's and O'Reilly's are all too eager to ask (notwithstanding the fact that the American flag is itself a symbolic representation of the United States' establishment and expansion, i.e., an organized, merciless, and genocidal march across an entire continent).

Just take a moment to step back and ask yourself whether these students are just innocently trying to express themselves in a politically inconvenient way on a politically inconvenient day or if they're just racists that wanted to get a response but wanted to do so in an "innocent" way. The conflict the school's trying to prevent is exactly the same one that the students are trying to cause.

So - to look at your examples - we just need to tweak them slightly to make them actually comparable to this case and not, y'know, strawmen.

Or to put it another way, what's to prevent a principal in Alabama from sending a kid wearing an MLK Jr shirt home on Confederate Memorial Day,

Is the kid trying to start a fight with pro-Confederacy students?

or making Muslim students not wear anything conspicuously religious on 9/11?

Are the Muslim students actually trying to upset other students?

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

You assume society is still at a point where being played like a puppet would invoke some sort of dignified reaction and an assertion of independence.

Evidently you have missed the whole information age!

[allisnow.livejournal.com]

As a public school teacher myself, it's up to the administration to (a) set a dress code and enforce it and/or (b) gauge the intent of the wearers. Remember the kerfuffle over the breast cancer awareness bracelets? Administrators were forced to decide if the boys in question were really interested in ending breast cancer, or just wanted to get attention by wearing something with the word "boobies" on it.

The admin's story here is that they wanted to prevent violence at the school that they thought might have been caused by the shirts. If the principal wanted to send the kids home, he should have been able to point to something they DID, i.e. taunting the Hispanic students, trying to instigate problems, not an image of a flag which, unless there's really something odd going on here, is also flying on a flagpole at the school every day.

It's been a while since this story actually broke, but I don't recall any allegations that the kids were either habitual troublemakers or were witnessed instigating problems. I'm fairly certain the admin didn't pursue any disciplinary actions against them.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

But we need to be as shallow as possible in the application of such a policy because when you've set

Since the school is responsible for the safety and environment of the children in their care, they have partial custodial rights. That includes dress codes and attire.

At our local high schools, kids are restricted from wearing baggy clothes that could hide weapons and displaying certain symbols associated with street gangs to avoid gang conflicts.

Teachers are accountable to the parents, not the kids, because they are taking the parents' role in the safety of the child during school hours.

[foolsguinea.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinco_de_Mayo

Cinco de Mayo commemorates the Mexicans saving the USA by preventing the French from supplying the Confederacy. And it's more widely celebrated in the USA than in Mexico. So it's not really a foreign holiday.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

Gee that's weird. Living in So California (where "Hispanics are a plurality)
I have never heard that before, and I have seen countless celebrations. I would go as far as to say that if one would ask any Mexican in my area they would say it was Mexican Independence day. I will have to do that.

[foolsguinea.livejournal.com]

Actually, since the Mexicans won the 5 Mayo battle and lost the war, it doesn't really commemorate what I said. But it's a clever way to justify it in the USA.

But Cinco de Mayo is at least a New World holiday, unlike St. Patrick's Day, Christmas, Easter, or Chanukah.

[onefatmusicnerd.livejournal.com]

I was going to point out that Mexico was more saved by Appomattox (and the reinstatement of the Monroe Doctrine) than the States were saved by Mexicans bitch slapping the French.

[kardashev.livejournal.com]

I think everybody needs to be offended a little more often in this country, regardless of skin color or ethnic background. We're becoming a nation of pussies so worried about offending each other that our speech is becoming as staid and boring as the product descriptions in a Sears catalog while also becoming dishonest as we try to avoid discussing various polka-dotted dragons in the living rook eating up all our popcorn. It's as if this entire country from black to white, liberal to conservative has forgotten the adage, "Sticks and stones can break my bones but names will never hurt me". The new adage is now, "Please don't offend me. I have asperger's syndrome and my feelings are sensitive."

[onefatmusicnerd.livejournal.com]

this

For the record....

[onefatmusicnerd.livejournal.com]

I suspect that racism is probably part of the motivation of these kids.

And racist expression is pretty clearly protected by the American Constitution.

Re: For the record....

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Your Constitutional rights are pretty limited in a public school. For example: You don't have freedom of expression/speech.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Cinco de Mayo isn't even a real foreign holiday.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2011/0505/Cinco-de-Mayo-Six-fun-facts-about-the-Fifth-of-May/How-did-it-start