A Stitch in Haste

To review: Ever since the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Tinker v. Des Moines, 393 U.S. 503 (1969), the broad question regarding students' constitutional liberties has been which rights they do and do not bring "past the schoolhouse gate."

Now, however, we are seeing not only an increasing presumption that the answer is "few or none" (supposed quasi-libertarian Clarence Thomas is adamant that the answer is "less than none"), but also a new, increasingly frequent encroachment by school officials before the schoolhouse gate -- the belief that students' liberties may be curtailed, and their conduct punished, for actions off school grounds and beyond the "educational environment."

The apex of this arrogant educratic presumptuousness was of course the recent decision in Morse v. Frederick, No. 06-278 (2007), which held that an adult student, not enrolled in school that day and not on school grounds, could be punished for engaging in expressive conduct on a public street. The mind reels.

But one should not let Morse eclipse another, more frequent manifestation of this new theory of abridging rights "before the schoolhouse gate" --

A Burlington [Connecticut] teenager has sued two top school officials, saying they violated her constitutional rights by removing her as class secretary because she used offensive slang to refer to administrators on an Internet blog.
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[The principal] removed Doninger as the class of 2008 secretary and banned her from running for re-election after discovering the teen called unnamed school administrators "douchbags" (sic) on an online journal.

Avery Doninger posted the message to www.livejournal.com, which is not associated with the school, from a home computer.
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While Doninger apologized and reported the incident to her mother, she refused to resign. Niehoff then "administratively removed" her from the post, the lawsuit states.
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[The principal said] last May that school leadership positions are a privilege, not a right.

The "rights versus privileges" distinction is an extra-constitutional canard often used (and abused) by government officials post facto to obscure the question of whether their actions were rational or arbitrary.

It's quite simple really: When a law-abiding person is penalized for lawful conduct merely because some public officeholder is offended by it, that's a constitutional violation; "rights versus privileges" has nothing to do with it. When the lawful conduct is speech, then the constitutional violation is even more egregious and damnable.

A thin-skinned wimp who can't take being called a "douchbag" [sic] every so often has no business being a principal in the first place. Neither does a jackboot who refuses to acknowledge that her authority does not extend "past the schoolhouse gate."