Bong Hits 4 Everyone

This might be my favorite free speech trial of all time. Surely you’ve heard about Bong Hits 4 Jesus by now. In case you haven’t: A couple kids decided to test the boundaries of their school’s free speech tolerance by unfurling a huge banner that read “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” while watching the Olympic torch pass their high school in Alaska several years ago. The New York Times reported:

Mr. Frederick later testified that he designed the banner, using a slogan he had seen on a snowboard, “to be meaningless and funny, in order to get on television.” Ms. Morse found no humor but plenty of meaning in the sign, recognizing “bong hits” as a slang reference to using marijuana. She demanded that he take the banner down. When he refused, she tore it down, ordered him to her office, and gave him a 10-day suspension.

The argument has since devolved into this: Fredrick believes that by requiring him to remove the banner, and then punishing him for it, the school has violated his right to free speech. The school counters that it has the authority to limit speech and expression during school hours in order to protect students from harmful and negative things, including hate speech, racism, bigotry and the encouragement by other students to do things that are harmful to oneself or others (including, in this case, promoting drug use).

The issue of free speech inside school hasn’t been seriously debated since the 1960s, after the Supreme Court ruled on Tinker v. Des Moines School District in 1969. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Tinker, protecting the students’ rights to wear black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War. In their decision, the court delcared: “…it can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

I support free speech to a fault. I hear hate speech, and while I am disgusted and horrified by it, I have a hard time denying the right to say it. If you cannot say things, you cannot make people understand why some kinds of thought and some kind of speech are hurtful and wrong. By banning something you simply make it enticing; what can be awful that it is lawfully not allowed? People said it once, right? So why not say it again, legal or not? It’s the same problem all societies have will all taboos — once you say you can’t do it, people will simply want to do it more.

This case is certainly not that serious; no one is going to be truly scarred by seeing a childish banner that says “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” And if this country can’t start having a frank discussion about drugs — especially ones as commonly used by all ages and all races as marijuana, especially in a school setting — in the 21st century, then we are more hopelessly backwards than I feared. But I do wonder if this hasn’t gone to far, if this case isn’t going to hurt the free speech movement more than it will help it. Yes, these kids should have the right to say and express these things in school so that we can honestly say we foster the environment of free exchange of ideas and words in our educational system (very, very important). But, at the same time… this is childish. Utterly childish. If they knowingly admit that they made this silly and provocative banner to get attention and be on TV, then they know this is really not a serious free speech issue. And free speech in school is different than free speech on the outside. This banner was distracting and somewhat inappropriate; certainly not the kind of thing worth being insubordinate about. Teacher says put it away… just put it away! You made your point, you probably made the news, mission accomplished.

Now you’ve put all of us in a precarious position. Should the judge decide that your message was so frivilous and distracting that it is more disruptive than expressive, and therefore falls into the realm of punishable offenses in school, you’ve struck a major blow against free speech that could forever influence — horrifically, at that — the free exchange of ideas in our education system. If the judge favors the free speech argument, you’ve given kids permission to pull idiot stunts all the live long day. Good job, kiddos. Makes me glad I’m not in high school anymore.

– Sara Tenenbaum