The Verboten J-Word

KSDK:

The message connected drug use and religion in a nonsensical phrase that was designed to provoke, and it got Joseph Frederick in a heap of trouble.

After he unfurled his 14-foot “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner on a Juneau, Alaska, street one winter morning in 2002, Frederick got a 10-day school suspension. Five years later, he has a date Monday at the Supreme Court in what is shaping up as an important test of constitutional rights.

Students don’t leave their right to free speech at the school door, the high court said in a Vietnam-era case over an anti-war protest by high school students.

But neither can students be disruptive or lewd or interfere with a school’s basic educational mission, the court also has said.

How to strike that balance is the question, particularly since the Columbine massacre and the Sept. 11 attacks have made teachers and administrators quicker to tamp down on unruly or unusual behavior.

I’m wondering if the real reason why Mr. Frederick is in trouble for this banner isn’t “Bong,” but “Jesus.” Perhaps if he would have converted to Islam, changed his name to something Arabic, and would have written “Osama” instead of “J***s” on the banner, if he wouldn’t have been suspended, and instead inducted directly into the National Honor Society.