What We Are About To Do Here Is What The Good Lord Would Call A Cleansing of the Wicked. I Call It A Good Old Fashioned Texas Ass Kicking.
Posted on 04/04/2006 6:30:28 AM PDT by chambley1
Anderson Urrutia, 8, complained of a headache on Sunday night. Then his tummy started hurting. At 2:15 a.m., he walked into his parents' bedroom and asked if he had to go to school. "I don't want to get in trouble again," he told his mother.
Anderson, a second-grader at Occoquan Elementary School, went to school on Monday with 5-year-old kindergartner Joseph Soriano after the two were not allowed to attend class Friday for wearing T-shirts that were deemed potentially disruptive by the principal.
Printed in large blue letters with red trim, the T-shirts stated in Spanish "Latino Forever" on the front and "100% Latino" on the back.
The incident -- which touched off a flurry of media attention and sparked a complaint from the American Civil Liberties Union -- is being brushed off by Prince William County schools officials.
Side-stepping interview requests from media, Phil Kavits, the school system's spokesperson, maintains that Friday's incident was a case of "a principal's best effort to keep his school safe and orderly, and nothing more."
The ACLU contends that the principal overstepped his bounds to limit the students' freedom of expression, and is asking for an apology to both students and parents.
The parents say it is too late for an apology.
Maria Urrutia and her daughter Carmen Soriano accompanied their sons to school Monday and had a brief interaction with Occoquan's principal, Todd Erickson.
"He was like, 'How're you doing guys?' " Maria said.
It wasn't the response she and Carmen had hoped for.
"I don't feel I should have to ask for an apology," Carmen said. "As an adult you know when you cross the line, you know when you should apologize, and he hasn't."
Maria and Carmen were contacted Friday afternoon and asked to come to Occoquan to speak with Erickson. When they arrived, they found their sons eating lunch on the floor of the main office, and no sign of the handmade T-shirts.
"They were buttoned all the way up to the top," Maria said. "You couldn't even know if they had a T-shirt underneath or not, that's how covered up these kids were."
Kavits heard a different account from Erickson, who said that the second shirts "didn't even button up, and left the whole thing visible."
Maria and Carmen said Erickson wanted the students to remove the T-shirts. That's when they took their sons home.
Three days after the event, Maria and Carmen are still smoldering over what they see as an unwarranted punishment of their children.
Maria worries about the lessons her son might learn from the event.
"If I stay quiet, what is that saying to my child?" she said. "That they can treat him like a dog and not apologize."
MORE THAN T-SHIRTS?
Friday's incident took place in the midst of a week of student protests against harsh anti-illegal immigration legislation pending in the Senate, an outburst of student political activism that ACLU Executive Director Kent Willis says is unprecedented in his experience.
"I don't recall anything like this on this scale in Virginia," said Willis, who has worked with ACLU in the state since 1987.
A Prince William County schools media release on Monday pointed out the danger lurking in such protests, referring to a student protest in Springfield when a student was stabbed.
Despite concerns for student safety, Willis says Erickson's preemptive action -- which the Occoquan principal made in part out of a concern that some of his students might join the protests -- does not meet the judicial criteria for such a decision.
First amendment rights are protected in schools unless it is demonstrated that an action will "materially and substantially" disrupt the learning environment, according to Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969).
In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a student who wore a black armband to protest the war in Vietnam was protected under First Amendment rights.
Willis acknowledged that the school officials have some leeway in making a decision where there is a strong basis to prevent freedom of speech.
For example, a "blatantly racist remark" on a T-shirt in an integrated high school where fights had broken out in previous cases might warrant preemptive action, he said.
What is unusual about the Occoquan case, Willis says, is the age of the students.
"These kinds of cases almost always develop in high schools and sometimes middle schools, where kids are educated enough to develop opinions on social issues and want to express them," he said.
THE AFTERMATH
Occoquan has yet to respond to the ACLU's request for an apology and a statement affirming the protection of students' free speech. Maria and Carmen have not decided on a course of action, but they've made an appointment with a lawyer. Meanwhile, Anderson and Joseph continue to attend school.
When she picked up Anderson at school Monday, Maria asked her son how his day was.
"OK," the second-grader said. "I had a headache all day long."
What if the kids were wearing t-shirts that read "Kiss Me, I'm Irish," or "100% Italian?" Would the principal do the same thing?
These two women USED their children as walking posters for their political points of view. I hope they get smacked down in court if it goes that far.
That you shouldn't be an obnoxious female dog and use your child to further your political agenda- put the silly slogan-bearing 'T'-shirt on yourself!
Timing is everything in this event. People who aren't Irish wear "Kiss me I'm Irish" tees and they are common place.
I once saw a T-shirt that read "Italian by Injection"..............(It was a woman. Get you mind offa da Mountain)......
oh sure, the ACLU jumps all over the 100% latino crap, but ignores the confederate flag suits.
Perhaps the principal would if Irish or Italians were streaming into the country illegally and then hosting mass demonstration across the country and inciting students to leave class to join in.
Mama mia, atsa spicey meatball!
hmm, if the children showed up with a white power shirt, or whites' forever, would it have received the same reaction?
They should call themselves Mongolics or Mongolos I doubt there is very much Spanish blood in all of them...
I'd settle for Mogolitos though...:)
imo
"These kinds of cases almost always develop in high schools and sometimes middle schools, where kids are educated enough to develop opinions on social issues and want to express them," he said.
True...these things only come up in the second grade when some poor kid is unlucky enough to have a real b*tch of a mother who's willing to use her own kid as a platform for her propoganda.
"the bitch"???
This is one example as to why your side will remain politically impotent.
I'm not sure whether the principal was right to temporarily ban t-shirt messages or not. But I can fully understand a parent being upset that their 5 year old child was sent home over such an innocuous message.
I'll bet that if a kid had been kicked out for wearing a Confederate flag t-shirt, you'd have been just as upset.
Which is the whole reason the parents made the 8yo and 5yo kids wear the t-shirts to begin with.
How about a T-Shirt that has "Jesus Saves" on the front and "100% Christian" on the back. Do you reckon the ACLU would jump into that fray?
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