Warren Watson
First Thoughts
8-24-07

A Course for Principals and Administrators

The principal of a public school is a jack (or jill) of all trades. In the course of a school day, the principal is concerned with safety, discipline, academics, standardized tests, parents, faculty, the school board, the community and much, much more.

Is there room for a concern about developing an atmosphere that encourages free speech and free expression?  Sure, there is.

That’s why Joseph McKinney, the chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at Ball State’s Teachers College, is working with the J-Ideas program in BSU’s Department of Journalism to again offer a graduate-level course in the First Amendment specifically designed for principals and administrators of public schools.

“The Administrator and the First Amendment,” an online course where students work at their own pace, will begin on Sept. 17 and is open to administrators in Indiana and elsewhere.

The course, which focuses on elements of media law and student media, has been offered three times before, most recently during the recently concluded summer semester.  It’s been a hit.

“I am going to be a better administrator because of this course,” said Joel Martin, a principal in Amboy who took the class during the summer.

Added John Engle, a principal in Cambridge City who also took the class, “The course gave me a better knowledge base to assist my staff in the process of teaching the First Amendment and aspects of journalism and civics in the school setting.”

For more information about the course, contact Angela Thomas at J-Ideas (1-765-285-4911).

Warren Watson
First Thoughts
August 15, 2007

First Amendment at the fair

I went to the Indiana State Fair the other day as part of Ball State Day. No, I did not try the deep-fried Pepsi or pineapple upside down corn cake, although I sampled a funnel cake at mid-afternoon.

It was actually a work day for me and several colleagues in the J-Ideas program, a student journalism and First Amendment institute based in the Department of Journalism at the Muncie campus.

We went to the fair to gather opinions from folks like you about the First Amendment as part of our ongoing research.
Over the course of six hours, we did interviews with 69 fairgoers. There were a few surprises — and some results we had expected.

Not surprising was that 96 percent of respondents said that people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions.

That’s pretty much in step with research nationwide. In abstract, Americans usually are quite supportive of the First Amendment.

That attitude softens when they are polled about specific actions. That was also the case with our fair sample:

--70 percent said people should not be allowed to deface the American flag as a means of political protest.
--46 percent said the press in America has too much freedom to do what it wants.
--19 percent, nearly one in five, said the government should have the right to censor news reports.

The specter of the war in Iraq, and the patriotic fervor it engenders in many Hoosiers, was a factor behind some of our findings.

We were surprised by the support we found for young people and the First Amendment. Eighty-two percent of fairgoers polled said public schools are doing only a fair or poor job in educating students about the First Amendment. More needs to be done.

And 67 percent said that high school students should be allowed to report controversial issues in their student newspapers without school administrative censorship. That compares to only 25 percent of school principals in a similar national poll we took last year.

This level of citizen support is encouraging for youth as they learn the path to becoming good citizens in our democracy.

Warren Watson
First Thoughts
August 6, 2007

Appeals court misapplied Morse, lawyer contends

You’ve read a lot in this blog this summer about the June Supreme Court decision Morse vs. Frederick, which is also known as “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.”

In the case, the Court ruled 5-4 that school administrators could censor student speech if they believed that it promoted drug use.  Chief Justice John Roberts said the Morse decision was a limited one, and only applied in cases where drugs were the subject of student speech.  In this case, student Joseph Frederick has unfurled a banner at a public event that said “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” Frederick claimed the banner was flippant and meant nothing.  The school feared that Frederick was advocating use of illegal drugs.

The high court did not overrule judicial precedent established nearly 40 years ago in Tinker vs. Des Moines, which confirmed that students have the right to free expression, within some limits.

Despite the limited ruling in Morse, one lower court – the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta – has tried to broaden “Bong Hits” to the area of school violence. On July 31, the court said a Fulton County school did not violate the First Amendment rights of a student who wrote about a dream in which a student shoots a math teacher.

The court said writing about a dream could create a “substantial disruption” in the school (the Tinker standard).  The case should have ended there.  But the same jurists said Morse applied as well, concluding that, “the same rationale applies equally, if not more strongly, to speech reasonably construed as a threat of school violence.”

Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, which monitors student free-speech issues, said Morse was misapplied.  He said the appeals court is “using Morse as authority to justify acts of censorship far beyond the circumstances of that ruling.”