Shawn Stevens is in 7th grade at Dover Middle School, New Hampshire. He also has autism. And he loves his country…so much that he brought an American flag to school, which was given to him by a family friend whose son is about to serve in Afghanistan. School officials did not appreciate Shawn’s patriotism. They confiscated the flag, saying that it could be dangerous.
“This was a safety concern. It had nothing to do with the flag, it had to do with the size of the stick that the flag was on,” said the principal.
Shawn, I salute you for your patriotism! America (and the world) needs more kids like you.
Read the rest at My Fox Boston.
Clint Cornelius, 33, was sentenced to a year in jail today. His crime? Parking his car, with guns and ammunition inside, at Mount Holyoke College.
He was initially charged in 2007 with three counts of possession of a firearm without a license, six counts of possession of a large-capacity firearm, and possession of ammunition without a license. A student had seen the guns in the car and, even though they were not hurting anyone and are supposed to be protected by the Second Amendment, decided to alert campus police. The officers then searched his car. He and his lawyer challenged the search and sought the dismissal of the charges because Cornelius,who had recently moved to Massachusetts from Georgia, should have had 60 days to obtain firearms permits, but the Supreme Judicial Court rejected these arguments.
He agreed to plead guilty to the ammunition charge, and his lawyer and the prosecutor agreed to a sentence of one year in jail. The judge said that the sentence “causes me some pain,” and I agree with him. In fact, I would go so far as to say that sentencing Cornelius to jail is an injustice. Nothing that he did was the least bit immoral or violated anyone’s rights. There was no evidence that he planned to use the guns to cause anyone harm. To investigate, prosecute, and imprison him for having guns in his car is an utter waste of law enforcement resources, causes suffering to an innocent man, and benefits no one. Clint Cornelius did nothing wrong and deserves to be free.
Five elementary schools in Texas are getting a $2 million grant to install cameras to track everything students eat. Each tray, with a unique code, will be photographed when the student chooses their food and again when they are done eating, to see exactly what nutritional content they consumed. This would be an invasion of privacy even if the data was only aggregated for statistical purposes, but each student’s food consumption is tracked individually, and the information is reported to their parents! Yes, these are kids, not adults, and yes, a cafeteria is a public place, but this is going too far. Kids have privacy rights too, and the desire to improve nutrition and combat obesity should not make people forget about individual rights. People of all ages should be able to live their lives without having everything they do monitored and analyzed.
On Cinco de Mayo, two high school students in California wore American flag t-shirts to school. The principal told them to either take the shirts off or wear them inside out, calling them “incendiary.” Now the two boys and their parents are suing the school system, claiming that the school’s actions violated their constitutional rights:
Kendall and Joy Jones; John and Dianna Dariano, parents of Matthew Dariano; and Kurt and Julie Ann Fagerstrom, parents of Dominic Maciel, are asking a judge to rule that what happened May 5 at Live Oak violated the First and Fourteenth amendments, and that the school district’s policy regarding student speech is too vague.
The suit also asks for “nominal damages” and to award attorneys’ fees.
The Morgan Hill Unified School District, Live Oak Principal Nick Boden and Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez are named as the defendants.
Some people might call this lawsuit frivolous, but I think it has merit. No one should be banned from showing pride in their country, even during the holiday of another country. So many teenagers try to be cool and fit in at all costs that it’s a breath of fresh air to hear about teens showing their patriotism and standing up for what they believe in. It’s too bad that the Fourth of July doesn’t fall during the school year, because it would be interesting to see if the school allowed students to wear Mexican flag t-shirts on America’s holiday.
Complaint (PDF), thanks to KSBW-TV via the Examiner
This is creepy. A high school in Pennsylvania gave out laptops to its students and then allegedly spied on them at home by remotely activating the laptops’ webcams. One student’s parents are filing a class-action lawsuit against the school. According to CNN,
“The suit said that on November 11, an assistant principal at Harriton High School told the plaintiffs’ son that he was caught engaging in “improper behavior” in his home and it was captured in an image via the webcam. According to the Robbinses’ complaint, neither they nor their son, Blake, were informed of the school’s ability to access the webcam remotely at any time.”
It’s messed up that the technology would even exist to allow people to do this. There may be legitimate uses for remotely activating webcams (perhaps to find your laptop if you lost it) but computers that an organization gives out to people should not have this feature. No one should be able to unknowingly watch another person through their computer.
And I can’t believe that the assistant principal (allegedly) accused a student of wrongdoing for something he was doing at home! How on Earth is what someone does at home the school’s business?
If the allegations are true, the school officials’ actions amount to a violation of the 4th Amendment, since they essentially looked inside students’ homes without a warrant. According to lawyers from the ACLU and EFF, this might even be a criminal violation of federal wiretapping laws. I certainly hope that the school, if truly guilty, is held fully accountable for these egregious violations of students’ rights.
