Section 14

18-year old Chicago high school student Allan Lee was arrested last week and charged with disorderly behaviour for writing a violent essay for his creative writing class. Lee has since had his enlistment contract with the Marines revoked because of the charges.

The essay mimicked the content of a violent video game but contained no threats against anyone.

Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho wrote a series of violent plays that came to light after his massacre. The Cary-Grove school board has now massively overreacted, crushing rights as it goes, and criminalised this form of expression. Trying to deal with some of the actual violence that goes on in American schools would be a better idea that making handing in homework a criminal offence.

Hat tip: Boing Boing.

Another story for the ‘pathetically-thin-skinned’ file came out of Oxford University this week. Spiked has the story of Merton College at Oxford, where all the students got a good lecturing about refraining from “unacceptable and extremely offensive” behaviour.

The vile crime that provoked this stern crackdown? During a pool game, someone used the word “gay” in a derogatory way, as in “that shot was so gay”. Says Spiked:

The idea that students should behave according to some predetermined college ethos stands in stark contrast to the old idea of universities as places where young people should be free to experiment, to think, to argue, to learn, to say what they please in a student common room…. Enforcing an official dogma about words, phrases and actions betrays an elitist view of what sort of behaviour is appropriate, and what is not.

Worse, it treats students as children who either must be reprimanded for saying naughty words or who must be protected from the jokey words of big ‘bully boys’ by student officials posing as social workers. This infantilises students – which is hardly conducive to creating an atmosphere where students can grow, both educationally and personally.

Merton College, founded in 1264, boasts the oldest surviving working library in the United Kingdom but sadly their copy of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty seems to have gone missing.

That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

This “harm principle” defines the boundary of what should be permitted speech. The “harm” caused by speech should be palpable if that speech is to be banned. Being a bit miffed at a throwaway comment does not constitute palpable harm.

Here’s a Walt Disney propaganda cartoon explaining how children are turned into fascist soldiers, complete with Teutonic knights sweeping in to Ride of the Valkyries and Voltaire’s books going up in flames.

If you’re going to watch this at work, you might want to turn the volume down lest your colleagues wonder what all the Heil Hitlers are about.

Hat tip: Boing Boing.

Stuff is reporting that the US Supreme Court has consented to hear the ‘Bong Hits 4 Jesus’ case.

The US Supreme Court is to decide whether a high school principal violated a student’s free-speech rights by suspending him for unfurling a banner that read “Bong Hits 4 Jesus”.

Student Joseph Frederick says the banner’s language was designed to be meaningless and funny in an effort to get on television as the Winter Olympic torch relay passed by the school in Juneau, Alaska, in January 2002.

The case is reminiscent of Tinker v. Des Moines in which the Court upheld the right of John and Mary Beth Tinker, high school students in Des Moines, to wear black armbands to school in protest at the Vietnam War, regarding the act as constitutionally protected speech.

Juneau School Board v. Frederick will determine whether the protection extends from symbolic political speech to pointless juvenile comedy (which of course it should).