Academia, Constitutional Law, Free Speech, Society

New Jersey Student Suspended For Confederate Flag On Truck

3434786_GI recently wrote about the declining free speech rights of students in the United States. There is another such case out of New Jersey this week where Gregory Vied, 17, has been suspended for refusing to remove a Confederate flag on his truck. In my view, it is a clear violation of free speech and an abuse of the rights of this student to express his views and associations by the administrators of Steinert High School in Hamilton Township.

After the American Civil Liberties Union intervened, the school reduced the original suspension of three days to one day. That hardly resolves the matter. The school is still punishing a student for a symbol on his truck outside of the school in the parking lot.

Vied insists that the flag is not meant to reflect racism but Southern pride. (His connection to his family’s Southern roots might be a tad stronger if the flag did not have “REDNECK” written across it, though it does reflect a group identity). Regardless of the message, it is clearly protected speech and shows the degree to which school officials are not imposing their own views on students — and teaching conformity to these future citizens. The decision is part of a growing line of cases granting sweeping deference to school officials and curtailing the free speech rights of students. I have long disagreed with that trend. In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969), the Supreme Court supported the first amendment rights of Iowa residents John F. Tinker (15 years old), John’s younger sister Mary Beth Tinker (13 years old), and their friend Christopher Eckhardt (16 years old) in wearing black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War. In his majority decision, Justice Abe Fortas held that “undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance is not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression.” In a statement would would seem to fit this case, Fortas found that “the record does not demonstrate any facts which might reasonably lead school authorities to forecast substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities, and no disturbances or disorders on the school premises in fact occurred.” Since Tinker, the Supreme Court has steadily limited the speech rights of students as in the ruling in the “Bong Hits For Jesus” case.

If this flag is banned, how about Free Tibet stickers or Black Pride signs or NRA stickers? We have seen schools cracking down on any bumper stickers viewed offensive but there is a decidedly ambiguous standard for such decisions. We have also seen tee-shirts with NRA symbols and American flags banned by schools. Given their school symbol, the Spartans, I wonder what would happen if students began to show images from Sparta where the helots were treated as sub-humans.

Putting aside the constitutional concerns, why shouldn’t students be encouraged to engage in such speech and associations? Many kids are entirely unconnected today and uninterested in public causes or speech. Rather than teaching about the marketplace of ideas, schools are teaching conformity and authoritarian caprice.

The Southern flag is clearly insulting to many people due to its historical associations. However, it is also a simple of Southern heritage and sacrifice. Robert E. Lee himself identified with the flag while rejoicing in the end of slavery. He stated:

In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country.

So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interests of the South. So fully am I satisfied of this, as regards Virginia especially, that I would cheerfully have lost all I have lost by the war, and have suffered all I have suffered, to have this object attained.

This is not to say that I am not sympathetic to those objecting to the symbol but I believe that the image of free speech being curtailed in this way is far more disturbing.

144 thoughts on “New Jersey Student Suspended For Confederate Flag On Truck”

  1. AY,

    What I found interesting recently when I was doing research on charter schools in New York City was the high salaries paid to some of the charter school leaders/CEOs. Dennis Walcott, Chancellor of the New York City Schools, earns $212,614. Compare what he earns to the salaries of some charter school CEOs:

    – Village Academies Network CEO Deborah Kenny earned $499,146 in the 2011-12 school year
    – David Levin of KIPP NY earned $395,350
    – Eva Moskowitz earned $475,244 on the Success Academy Charter Schools’ tax forms

    Check out the chart at the following link:

    Top 16 NYC charter school executives earn more than Chancellor Dennis Walcott
    Big paychecks are called ‘outrageous’ as New York City charter schools claim their students would face cuts if the schools are charged rent under a new mayor.
    BY Rachel Monahan /
    NEW YORK DAILY NEWS /
    Published: Saturday, October 26, 2013
    http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/top-16-nyc-charter-school-execs-out-earn-chancellor-dennis-walcott-article-1.1497717

  2. Paul Schulte:

    So what? Right is right and economics has nothing to do with it.

    It isnt the slave owners who should have been reimbursed, it is the slaves themselves who should have been paid for the wages lost from many years of forced labor.

    I am amazed that you would even write that as a legitimate reason.

    1. Bryon – the government talked about giving the freed slaves 40 acres and a mule, but they never got around to it. I would agree that they were due past wages, however, the former slaveholders were financially destitute.

  3. Paul wrote: “It is usually the regular public schools who expel students who need an alternative education.”

    I responded: “Public schools in my state are required to provide educational services to students with special needs. If a student’s needs are severe enough, the local system may have to pay the tuition for a child to attend a private school/facility that can provide the appropriate educational services to the student. Are the public schools in the state where you teach not required to do the same?

    *****
    Then Paul wrote: “Elaine – charter schools are required to take special needs students just like the regular public schools. They are better at integrating them into the regular classroom because they have no other choice. If they get a special needs student they cannot provide service for, i.e., severely disabled, they are still required to give them an education. They usually pay to have another facility take them on. But the cost of the education comes from the charter school funds.”

    I responded: “I didn’t say anything about charter schools.”

    You wrote: “It is usually the regular public schools who expel students who need an alternative education.”

    I responded: “Public schools in my state are required to provide educational services to students with special needs. If a student’s needs are severe enough, the local system may have to pay the tuition for a child to attend a private school/facility that can provide the appropriate educational services to the student. Are the public schools in the state where you teach not required to do the same?”

    *****

    Then Paul wrote:

    “Elaine – a careful reading of my first sentence will show that I answered your question.”

    *****

    You claimed that “regular public schools” expel students who need alternative education. I asked you if public schools in your state were required to meet the educational needs of special needs students. You replied by saying that “charter schools are required to take special needs students just like the regular public schools” Can you provide proof that “regular public schools” are in the habit of expelling students with special needs?

  5. Read your article and currently in Arizona, ALL charter schools are under the State Board of Charter schools. And they have to re-certify all the time. Every five years they are audited. Ever fifteen years their charter is up for renewal. This last year was the first renewal year for the original schools. Some got raked over the coals and some were praised. The last school I worked at was praised.

  7. Wisconsin is like the canary in the coal mine.

    “In the window of the now-defunct LifeSkills Academy on N. 38th St. in Milwaukee, there hangs a forlorn sign advertising School Choice Week, slated for Jan. 26 to Feb. 1. The current administration in Madison has declared Wisconsin School Choice Week every year since 2011, and this year likely will be no different.

    LifeSkills Academy, as a promoter of “school choice,” made some jaw-dropping choices. One such choice was to close without warning in the middle of the night in December, disrupting the education of 66 students as their families scrambled to find alternatives, while keeping the full $200,000 it had received in taxpayer funds for a semester left unfinished. Another was to open a new LifeSkills Academy in Florida as a McKay Special Needs “scholarship” school, qualifying for that state’s special needs vouchers by declaring sudden expertise in various disabilities.

    As parents of public school students with significant developmental disabilities, we find this sequence of school choices to be more chilling than a Wisconsin winter. The story of LifeSkills Academy also casts a revealing light on a revamped special needs voucher bill introduced in the Wisconsin Legislature on Tuesday, previous iterations of which have been blocked through determined opposition from families and disability organizations statewide.

    Because of the activism of parents before us, our children attend school with their neighborhood peers. Across the country, students with disabilities have the right to a free and appropriate public education, with legally enforceable protections, through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

    Unfortunately, the rights and protections of the IDEA do not apply in private voucher schools such as LifeSkills Academy, and special needs vouchers would not change that. Private voucher schools are not required to have therapists or special educators on staff, and Wisconsin’s existing voucher program has a dismal track record of expelling or “counseling out” students with disabilities.

    The revamped special needs voucher bill puts no limit on the number of vouchers that could be granted statewide, reducing funding available for every school district in the state. While the recent statewide voucher expansion specified that schools must be in existence for at least two years before qualifying to take vouchers, the new special needs voucher bill makes no such provision, leaving the doors wide open for fly-by-night schools to choose Wisconsin solely to take advantage of the vouchers — and of some of Wisconsin’s most vulnerable students.

    The special needs voucher threat to the students of Wisconsin is why we are part of Stop Special Needs Vouchers, a statewide parent-led grass-roots group that advocates in favor of inclusive public education and in opposition to voucher schemes funded and supported in large part by out-of-state interests. We are deeply opposed to this latest attempt to pull public money out of public schools and into private schools where students with disabilities surrender their rights at the door, if indeed the door is not slammed in their faces.

    The private schools are the entities that would be given the real choice. And when private schools get to choose, students with significant disabilities lose. Our public school students stand to lose funding for critical shared resources, at a time when public education funding already has been deeply slashed.

    Students with disabilities deserve a quality education. We cannot let School Choice Week declarations and harmful special needs voucher legislation distract us from this goal. Instead, we should be supporting and strengthening Wisconsin’s public schools. Together we can work to restore public school funding, perhaps with the recently reported state surplus, rather than drain funding via vouchers. We also propose to improve open enrollment, so students with disabilities have the same opportunity as their nondisabled peers to choose between public school districts, where their rights are protected and there are assurances of quality.

    Together we call on the Legislature to work with us on these issues and to reject special needs vouchers outright in 2014.”

    This was submitted by Pamela DeLap of Oshkosh, Kevin Fech of Cudahy, Nancy Gapinski of Glendale, Terri Hart-Ellis of Whitefish Bay, Tammie Hefty of Mount Horeb and Joanne Juhnke of Madison. They are part of the group Stop Special Needs Vouchers.

    Read more from Journal Sentinel: http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/when-schools-choose-students-with-disabilities-lose-b99189757z1-241733581.html#ixzz2xMzhBBS9
    Follow us: @JournalSentinel on Twitter

  8. Elaine – a careful reading of my first sentence will show that I answered your question. 🙂

  9. The Roman Empire was built on slavery. It was Muslim blacks who sold the slaves in Africa. It was usually other blacks who captured them. Slavery was legal in the United States and was protected by the Constitution (although the word slavery does not appear).

    In 1860 a prime field hand cost roughly $1000. In today’s money that is around $100,000. If the US outlawed slavery because they had enough votes in Congress, I (as a slaveholder) would be out $100,000 in today’s money. To give you a current example. Let’s say the Congress outlaws automobiles. I am out the money I paid for the automobile, I might even have to continue paying for an auto I now no longer have, but I bought it on credit. Many of the countries that outlawed slavery paid the slaveholders for their slaves, France did this for one. The United States never offered to do it. So, as you can hopefully see, there is an economic side to this.

    I am not a fan of slavery since my people were periodically captured by Vikings and sold to Arabs. And the British enslaved my homeland. However, as a historian you learn not to add your morals or ethics to historical issues.

  10. Paul Schulte

    “Elaine – charter schools are required to take special needs students just like the regular public schools. They are better at integrating them into the regular classroom because they have no other choice. If they get a special needs student they cannot provide service for, i.e., severely disabled, they are still required to give them an education. They usually pay to have another facility take them on. But the cost of the education comes from the charter school funds.”

    *****

    I didn’t say anything about charter schools.

    You wrote: “It is usually the regular public schools who expel students who need an alternative education.”

    I responded: “Public schools in my state are required to provide educational services to students with special needs. If a student’s needs are severe enough, the local system may have to pay the tuition for a child to attend a private school/facility that can provide the appropriate educational services to the student. Are the public schools in the state where you teach not required to do the same?”

  12. PS you are so full of BS…. I’m from Missouri…. Show Me…. Show me where charter schools are forced to take special needs children….. And if they are that they are required to spend charter school funds….

  13. AY – you so do not know what you are talking about and it is not my job to educate you.

  14. The kids in that school need to get tee shirts with the first paragraph of the Tinker decision printed on the front and also black armbands with small confederate flags located in the center of the armband. They should wear these shirts and armbands to school each day. If all the kids did it then the school and its dumb school board would have to punish all of them. On the back of the tee shirts there should be a sentence: The British Are Coming!

    Or, as Curley in the Three Stooges said: Hotsi Totsi, I smell a Nazi.

  15. Paul Schulte:

    How do you nuance the enslavement of 4 million human beings? Slavery is evil, pure and simple.

    Slavery should have been abolished at the ratification of our Constitution.

    The civil war was about slavery. States’ rights? BS, there is no right by any state to force one man to submit to another and give the sweat of his brow so that another may live a life of idleness.

    The soldiers of the south died for a corrupt system based on evil, they died for nothing. Their deaths had no greater meaning, they threw their lives away for a morally detestable system.

    A man has not right to the life and effort/work of another man.

    “A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)”

    Ayn Rand

    Those slaves had a right to their own life and the civil war was about giving black that natural right. The other stuff you spoke about was extraneous to the primary issue.

Comments are closed.