Posted on 11/25/2011 7:26:01 PM PST by peggybac
A Kansas teenager is in trouble after mocking Gov. Sam Brownback during a mock legislative assembly for high school students.
Emma Sullivan, a senior at Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, was in Topeka on Monday as part of Kansas Youth in Government, a program for students interested in politics and government.
During the session, in which Brownback addressed the group, Sullivan posted on her personal Twitter page:
“Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot”
On Tuesday, Sullivan was called to her principal’s office and told that the tweet had been flagged by someone on Brownback’s staff and reported to organizers of the Youth in Government program.
The principal “laid into me about how this was unacceptable and an embarrassment,” Sullivan said. “He said I had created this huge controversy and everyone was up in arms about it … and now he had to do damage control.
(Excerpt) Read more at kansas.com ...
I thought it was awesome myself. However Wilson was not thrown in jail because of it but he was punished for his outburst.
In September 2009, Wilson received international attention when he interrupted a speech by U.S. President Barack Obama to a joint session of Congress by shouting "You lie!"[2][3] Wilson apologized to Obama, who accepted the apology, and the incident resulted in a formal rebuke by the House of Representatives.[4]
So are you saying that this high school twit should be punished like Joe Wilson was for his behavior?
My mistake, I was unaware of what you said above - I thought you had missed that it wasn't the school district per se.
That said, you are absolutely correct - way too much time and resources spent on irrelevant issues by public employees.
Both Brownback and the girl, are jerks.
If this was a private school or homeschool I would absolutely agree with you. However....You are missing the fundamental problem and conflict here.
Problem and conflict:
It is impossible to resolve the conflict between First Amendment Rights and freedom of conscience and compulsory socialist K-12 schooling. Our nation's government schools trash every First Amendment Right ( speech, press, assembly, and exercise of religion) and they are not religiously neutral. At the moment our socialist schools establish the religion of atheistic secular humanism.
There is a solution: Begin the process of privatizing K-12 schooling. Let these matters be settled privately in a private setting between parents and their child's privately chosen private teachers and principal.
If this were a private school, there would be no story to report because private schools ( freely chosen) have every right to regulate behavior of their clients in the same way that all private businesses do.
The severe restriction of 1st Amendment Rights, and in this particular case specifically targeted 1st Amendment Political Speech, under the legalism of in loco parentis authority of Education Officials is an exercise in the destruction of Individual Liberties in a failed Education System that was by design made to create lower class worker bees.
Doesn’t matter what the young woman said to Brownback as long as it wasn’t legally designated a “threat”, she has 1st Amendment Rights that exceed any in loco parentis laws of this country.
You either support the 1st Amendment and free speech and free political speech, or you don’t. You have made it clear you do not. Care to prove me wrong?
We agree about code of conduct and the purpose of a school system to inculcate a sense of civic responsibility upon it’s students.
However,
1. She did not say anything even remotely threatening or illegal.
2. She did not interfere nor disrupt with the event.
3. The school administrators can NOT censor purely political speech in what amounts to a private conversatoin held in public between two individuals that is neither threatening nor disruptive, especially when one is a public elected official.
4. If she had wrote a sign and waved it with the same words on it, it would have been a problem. However, the online twitter post is offsite, which means the school is hanging on to a very thin thread of in loco parentis standing to do anything to the young woman in regards to punishment.
5. If the school didn’t have a specific policy prohibiting students from using cell phones on school time, school grounds, and/or during field trips, the school has no standing.
A couple of letters from her parent’s lawyers and she’ll get a written apology from the school board.
If her parents are liberals, and she learned this socio-political ideology at home, it is her 1st Amendment Right to act like an idiot in public, no matter the school system code of conduct.
Or should schools return to late 19th century’s ‘conformity at all costs’ philosophies?
Or should school systems pick winners and losers of extra curricula educational opportunities based upon the political party preferences of the parents, student, or school system?
In NJ, it is SOP to deny extra-curricula funding to school systems in areas that did not vote for election winners. How far should Brownback’s media massagers go in raising stakes in this tiff?
Please read my posts.
But what business does the school have in getting involved in this?
Seems like ‘ideology’ gets in the way of seeing the right to freedom of speech. She has every right to say what she said. You can criticize her comments, but not her right to express those comments. I say the same thing about the President of the United States. What would be some Freeper’s reaction if the President of the United states did what Brownback’s office did?
The school should have treated the report the same way they would treat a report about a space alien abduction or an Elvis sighting (i.e. responded with some meaningless placating-sounding bafflegab and then circular-filed the whole thing).
America was once a free country.
Were the Dixie Chicks “First Amendment Rights” violated when they badmouthed the President and radio stations started pulling their music?
No. They said their piece, and people responded to them. They have the right to say what they want, and I have the right to not listen to them. That’s not a violation of their speech right. What happened with Miss Sullivan was totally different. She tweeted something rude about a politician. The politician’s staff read it and called the principal’s office and complained. Miss Sullivan was called in and reprimanded.
And what’s wrong with that? I’ll tell you. No government official, not president, nor senator, nor governor, nor high school principal has the right to reprimand or demand an apology any citizen for speaking out against him or her. I wish she had backed up what she said with examples of how the guy sucks (he’s since provided many examples since this broke), but we can’t have everything. That’s the First Amendment. Sometime it protects crude and boorish speech, but it must remain as strong as it is.
Because if we let it lose it’s teeth, it won’t protect the important speech later.
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