Back when I was in large college (pun intended!) this is the variety of stunt you laughed like mad about, but after you got caught, you apologized, acknowledged your punishment, and that was the finish of it. But today, when a student’s juvenile exuberance prospects him to show a banner that cracks up his cohorts but humiliates the higher faculty administrators, he instead sues all the way to the Supreme Court docket more than his suspension.
Quality glass bong The time was January 2002, and the occasion was the passing of the Olympic Torch via that snowy Alaskan town of Juneau. Of program, Joseph Frederick, the defendant in this circumstance, was warned that any inappropriate actions when the torch handed by (and the Countrywide media showed their town’s high faculty to the globe) would not be tolerated, but evidently the prospect was as well excellent for jokester Joe to go up. For as the cameras whirled and the torch paraded earlier the higher faculty (with all the dutiful students standing outdoors), Frederick and the dudes unfurled a fourteen-foot banner on nationwide tv which study “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” Juneau High College Principal Deborah Morse angrily confiscated the indication and suspended Frederick for 10 days for “advocating unlawful drug use,” if not downright idiocracy. But the kicker arrived when Frederick (who claimed he was just possessing exciting) introduced the circumstance to court docket on the guise Juneau High violated his proper to freedom of speech.
Nicely boys and girls, five a long time have handed, which must indicate the Supreme Court docket is now about to hear this circumstance of high faculty hi-jinx Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg certainly exhibits her age when she claims “… it is not clear that this [implies] ‘smoke pot.'” Justice Stephen Breyer is surely nearer to the centre with his comment, “If kids go around obtaining banners creating a joke out of drug use, that really tends to make it more durable for me to persuade students … not to use medication,” but I feel it is Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. who really hits the nail on the head, or the pot in the pipe as the scenario may possibly be. “There is certainly a broader problem,” states Roberts, “of whether principals or instructors … have to dread that they’re heading to spend out of their private pockets each time they just take steps pursuant to proven guidelines.”
It just so transpires that (sadly) I am now a bit of an specialist on equally sides of the issue. In higher college, I not only smoked marijuana, but my poem “Stoned” was each little bit the anthem in my Midwestern 70s city that Dylan’s ballad “Every person Must Get Stoned” was in its 60s heyday. But I have not partaken in pot in a quarter of a century and, as for Jesus, “the medication of immortality”–the every day Eucharist–has changed cannabis as my drug of decision. I nonetheless giggle occasionally at Cheech & Chong films and sometimes even now even go through “Stoned” (which nevertheless will get the most laughs of everything I have written prior to or because) but ONLY in connection with my later poems such as “The Transform” or “The Unlimited River and the Timeless Tree” to present that my life, like that of the other Augustine’s, has changed from wayward youth to pursuit of Reality.
The actually amusing (this time, “amusing” as in “ironic”) factor about this case is that, in the ensuing five several years since the circumstance began, Joseph Frederick has grow to be a trainer (in China, no significantly less!) himself. Of program, Joe hasn’t, like myself, had the double lesson/blessing of becoming a instructor AND father, nor has he had as several several years of expertise. But, presented all that (and making it possible for for the truth the Chinese young children may possibly be a tad far more respectful of authority), I’m still amazed ol’ “Bong Hit” Joe has not nevertheless understood the need for student restraint. Hopefully the Supreme Court will get this a single appropriate, but if they do not, this previous stoner might personally take a slow boat (loaded with a lot of silly-druggie banners) to China, seek out out Mr. Frederick’s classroom, and attempt to influence him myself.