Freedom of Speech in schools

In class we have been discussing freedom of speech in school, and what kind of speech is protected by the first amendment in a school setting. The amount of gray area in these cases is astonishing. Each case has it's own set of facts, making it extremely hard to make broad rulings. In the case of Tinker v. Des Moines the students who were protesting the Vietnam war won their case against their school. The school believed that the students would be disturbing the regular school day and creating issues. As a result, tried to suspend the students for wearing the arm bands. The reason the students won their case was because they were defending a legitimate political view. They were not trying to make problems for the kids who agreed with the war, they were simply voicing their opinion.

This week at my school we experienced our own case of restriction of freedom of speech. Homecoming week is a big deal at any school, and this week we have a few traditions. The biggest, and most fun of which happens on Friday. Each class has a color they wear (freshmen wear white, sophomores wear grey, junior wear red, and seniors wear black), they changed the colors recently from white, green, blue and black, to our school colors. That was fine. This year they wanted to take the class colors away all together. They wanted to "support school unity" and "keep seniors from hazing the freshmen." I have problems with both of these points. As a senior, I was very excited to have this one day of the year where we all dress in black and get to be the "big dogs" of the school. The threat of this being taken away was very upsetting, and as a result the senior class came together and decided to wear black despite what the school wanted us to do. A few coaches, had a problem with these plans, and threatened to bench their athletes if they wore their class color.

Even though I think we should be allowed to wear our class colors, if this became a case and was taken to the supreme court the school would win. The reason for us wearing black does not have anything to do with a political view, or a belief. The only reason we want to wear black is for tradition. There is no free-speech being violated, it is simply something we want to do for the sake of doing it.

11 years later...

September 11, 2001 is a day that I will never forget. No one living in the United States on that fateful day can possibly forget it. My experience on that day was a bit different than most people my age. I'm 17 years old and that means I was only 6 years old when our country was attacked by terrorists that day. Unlike most of my peers I remember it better than most days of my childhood. I attribute my extremely vivid memories of the day to the fact that I was in New York city, and in the Twin Towers themselves less than 3 weeks before the event.

Few things in this world make me cry, two of them have to do with 9/11. One is the events of the day and thinking about how many people perished so quickly. The other is the men and women in our military and their families. In class we watched a documentary about the World Trade Center on 9/11, and one of the parts that really hit me was when they were in the basement of the buildings, with the shopping center. In that moment I recognized the store, and had a pretty vivid flashback of when I was there at the age of 6.

9/11 is now also called Patriot Day, and it should be remembered and celebrated all over the country. Most kids at my school wouldn't have remembered it was the anniversary of such tragic events if they didn't have some kind of history class. Not too many people talk about it. I think there should be something more. The kids who are younger don't have any memory of it, and should be taught about it in grade school. It is now part of our country's collective memory, and should be treated as such.