According to the Omaha World-Herald,
A small group of Westside High School students plastered the school Monday with posters advocating that a white student from South Africa receive the “Distinguished African American Student Award” next year.
The students’ actions on Martin Luther King Jr. Day upset several students and have led administrators to discipline four students.
The posters, placed on about 150 doors and lockers, included a picture of the junior student smiling and giving a thumbs up. The posters encouraged votes for him.
The posters were removed by administrators because they were “inappropriate and insensitive,” Westside spokeswoman Peggy Rupprecht said Tuesday.
Rupprecht said the award always has been given to black students. . . .
Rupprecht said disciplinary action was taken against the students involved but, citing student privacy policies, she declined to specify the penalties or what about the students’ action led to them.
Karen Richards said her son, Trevor, who was pictured on the posters, was suspended for two days for hanging the posters. Two of his friends also were disciplined for hanging the posters. A fourth student, she said, was punished for circulating a petition Tuesday morning in support of the boys. The petition criticized the practice of recognizing only black student achievement with the award.
One of the school’s students, Tylena Martin, said she was hurt by the posters and the backlash she said it caused. . . .
Westside has fewer than 70 blacks out of 1,843 students this year. . . .
[Karen] Richards said her family moved to Omaha from Johannesburg six years ago. Trevor, she said, “is as African as anyone.”
Under Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Comm. School Dist. (1969), speech may be restricted if it’s disruptive — but not because it’s “inappropriate and insensitive,” something that many students no doubt thought about the anti-Vietnam-War black armbands that Tinker held to be protected speech.
Of course, if a school has content-neutral rules prohibiting students from putting up posters on doors or lockers, the school may evenhandedly enforce this policy; the doors and lockers are its property, and it may bar students from using them as their own billboards. But if it’s punishing students for the views that their posters are expressing — for instance, if posters are generally allowed, either officially or de facto, but these were the only ones that were punished — then that seems like a violation of the Tinker doctrine. Likewise for the school’s punishing the student who circulated a petition “criticiz[ing] the practice of recognizing only black student achievement with the award.”
Thanks to reader Barry Jacobs for the pointer.
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