Back again when I was in substantial faculty (pun supposed!) this is the sort of stunt you laughed like insane about, but right after you received caught, you apologized, approved your punishment, and that was the end of it. But today, when a student’s juvenile exuberance prospects him to display a banner that cracks up his cohorts but humiliates the high college directors, he alternatively sues all the way to the Supreme Courtroom more than his suspension.
the bong shop The time was January 2002, and the situation was the passing of the Olympic Torch via that snowy Alaskan city of Juneau. Of training course, Joseph Frederick, the defendant in this situation, was warned that any inappropriate habits when the torch handed by (and the Nationwide media confirmed their town’s high university to the entire world) would not be tolerated, but apparently the possibility was too excellent for jokester Joe to pass up. For as the cameras whirled and the torch paraded previous the large university (with all the dutiful learners standing outdoors), Frederick and the dudes unfurled a fourteen-foot banner on national tv which go through “Bong Hits four Jesus.” Juneau High School Principal Deborah Morse angrily confiscated the sign and suspended Frederick for ten days for “advocating illegal drug use,” if not downright idiocracy. But the kicker came when Frederick (who claimed he was just obtaining exciting) brought the case to courtroom on the guise Juneau High violated his proper to freedom of speech.
Nicely boys and women, five many years have passed, which have to suggest the Supreme Courtroom is now about to hear this circumstance of large college hello-jinx Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg surely exhibits her age when she claims “… it isn’t very clear that this [means] ‘smoke pot.'” Justice Stephen Breyer is undoubtedly closer to the centre with his remark, “If children go all around possessing banners making a joke out of drug use, that actually can make it harder for me to persuade pupils … not to use drugs,” but I think it is Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. who genuinely hits the nail on the head, or the pot in the pipe as the situation may be. “There is certainly a broader issue,” says Roberts, “of whether or not principals or academics … have to worry that they are likely to pay out of their private pockets whenever they take actions pursuant to recognized policies.”
It just so transpires that (sadly) I am now a little bit of an professional on both sides of the concern. In large university, I not only smoked cannabis, but my poem “Stoned” was every little bit the anthem in my Midwestern 70s town that Dylan’s ballad “Everybody Should 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 medicine of immortality”–the everyday Eucharist–has changed hashish as my drug of option. I still chortle often at Cheech & Chong videos and at times nonetheless even read “Stoned” (which nevertheless gets the most laughs of something I’ve created ahead of or given that) but ONLY in link with my later on poems this kind of as “The Convert” or “The Limitless River and the Timeless Tree” to show that my existence, like that of the other Augustine’s, has modified from wayward youth to pursuit of Real truth.
The actually humorous (this time, “amusing” as in “ironic”) factor about this situation is that, in the ensuing 5 several years considering that the case commenced, Joseph Frederick has become a teacher (in China, no less!) himself. Of training course, Joe hasn’t, like myself, had the double lesson/blessing of getting a teacher AND father, nor has he experienced as several many years of encounter. But, given all that (and allowing for the reality the Chinese young children may possibly be a tad a lot more respectful of authority), I am still shocked ol’ “Bong Strike” Joe has not nevertheless realized the require for college student restraint. Ideally the Supreme Court docket will get this 1 correct, but if they never, this previous stoner may possibly personally consider a gradual boat (loaded with lots of foolish-druggie banners) to China, find out Mr. Frederick’s classroom, and try to convince him myself.