The school has turned off the monitoring program and students, taking no chances, have taped over the webcams and the microphones. The FBI will investigate to see if the school broke federal law.

Michael and Holly Robbins of Penn Valley, Pa., filed the lawsuit. In their lawsuit, they asked the judge “to issue a restraining order preventing the district from remotely activating the webcams on student notebooks. They also requested that the judge block the district from recalling the laptops from students, saying that they believe school officials will then wipe the MacBooks’ hard drives to delete evidence of any camera activation.”

The school has since admitted to using the cameras and microphones to located missing laptops. However, the parents claimed the laptop was not reported missing at the time.

On the TV Program The Early Show, the student said the principal accused him of selling drugs and taking pills. So now there’s  a motive for the principal.

It’s no surprise that an official with such control over students would try to grab more control by monitoring students at home. If the state can take someone’s children for eight hours a day, I guess these officials figured camera monitoring was less offensive – which it is.

Faced with losing their Orwellian surveillance device, the school is probably going to ask the state government to proceed to the next logical step of forced schooling and require students to become full-time boarders at the school. Or maybe take an intermediate step and require students to stay at the school/prison until 9 or 10 p.m., at least until the local curfew kicks in.

Read a Computer World article.

Read a CBS News article.

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The new policy did not start without problems. At first, all students rushed to the cafeteria at the same time and faced long lines. Soon students learned that if their last class was far from the cafeteria, they would be better off going to the cafeteria a little later in the lunch hour.

Janitorial staff initially worried the new policy would introduce more work. The cafe manager didn’t think he could serve all students during one hour. Teachers were split; many immediately thought of ways to use the time to teach students in new ways. A group including teachers, students, janitorial staff, and administrators set out to resolve these problems and eventually devised an agreeable plan. For the problem of serving all students at once, the cafe set up satellite distribution points! Innovation at a government school!

Eight years later, the principal considers the single lunch hour a huge success. Officials from other schools regularly visit to learn about the policy.

It’s worth noting the principal sees fewer lunchtime fights because students are not confined to lunchroom. Why not extend this idea to schooling in general? There would be a whole lot less tension if teenagers could decide how to spend all their time, and whether to spend it at school or at work, and to decide who they want to spend time with. Those who show up at school, likely want to study the offered coursework, while those who choose jobs, want to work at a job.

People over 18 with jobs often will leave a job because of the culture and the people. For teenagers, they often have to study/work with the same people for four years during high school and often many years prior.

But progress is progress, and at least for one hour during the day, for 60 precious minutes, teenage students can decide for themselves how to spend their time.

Read this amazing article written by the principal about the policy (PDF).

Read a related article.

Take action! Propose this idea at your school! Print copies of the principal’s article and distribute it to administrators and teachers at your school. Explain the benefits of one lunchtime period for all students (and teachers):

• fewer lunchtime supervisors needed
• more time to spend with students one-on-one during the day, instead of before and after school
• less stressed students
• less talking during class (we hope) because students know they can speak to any of their friends during lunch (at most schools, students need to have the same lunch period to meet)
• more student club participation
• only clean cafeteria and grounds once, not after many different lunch periods
• more time for students and teachers to meet
• and more!

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The school admins claim skinny jeans violate their modesty requirements. They might have a point. Some clothes are not appropriate for all circumstances, and choosing which clothes are appropriate is a subjective decision. The school likely doesn’t allow males to show their briefs, a style favored by some, and students likely leave government schools for this reason.

However, students and their parents also have the right to decide if they think skinny jeans or any other dress style distracts from studying. And they have the right to leave a school that bans styles they deem acceptable, as Seth and his Mom decided.

The dress code could have been the last straw. The school may be conservative with all policies: music, arts, essays, group projects. Do they welcome creativity and new ideas or suppress them?

Seth has an exciting road ahead of him. Not only can he wear any dress style, he will have much more control over what he studies. Clearly Seth thinks for himself and now he can think for himself while learning. And when Seth meets his friends after the government school day ends, he’ll be wearing skinny jeans, while his friends, unless they changed their clothes, will be wearing more conservative attire.

» Read a related article.

» Seth’s facebook page?

» Search Google for more stories about Seth.

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As you might expect, government school textbooks (and many gov’t teachers) praise government solutions, regardless of how these “solutions” affect your rights and irrespective of their effectiveness. This seminar favors non-government solutions, ones you probably don’t learn about at your school.

Here’s a description from the program’s website:

Our five-day series of lectures, readings, films, multimedia presentations, and small group discussion teaches students what economics is, how it affects their lives, and how understanding it can help them achieve better lives for themselves, their communities, and the world at large. Informative, inspiring, and fun, The Challenge of Liberty is an ideal way to make summer vacation intellectually rewarding.

Learn more.

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Government admins disagreed. They demanded the Sadie Pendleton remove the hair dye. Well, that wasn’t so easy since the dye was semi-permanent, meaning it would take about two months to wash out. Her parents insisted she be allowed to remain in the school, and the admins backed down but still forbid Sadie from adding more dye to her hair.

Update 1 from Sadie’s father:

“After the purple faded, we proceeded to dye red streaks. The school has said NOTHING regarding the red!”

Update 2 from Sadie’s father:

Thanks again! We have another student that tried to dye her hair a natural color but it turned out green. Same school!

She was told by the school that she cannot return until it was back to normal. Her father went to the school to fight it and they are letting her come back as long as it’s fading!

The good news is that more are standing up for the right to freely express! Soon more will do the same and we will prevail!

Your support is awesome!

The girl and her parents parents plan to continue the fight. They want to remove this restriction on free expression. Learn more.

Her parents are right — this issue is more about free expression, than some hair dye. The gov’t admins can’t stand to see someone act like a free individual, a free thinker.

If other students were in fact distracted by someone’s hair style or clothing or car, the admins should speak to those students who may be suffering from envy or boredom or a failure to concentrate. These are the students who need help. Outside of schools, people have purple hair. A person who cannot produce when faced with purple hair will find it difficult to earn a living.

Hopefully, more students will choose to express themselves with their hair.  Wax, dye, close cuts, braids — all of these options can create some individual style.

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Once again, the government’s schools have overstepped their primary purpose of providing an education (if that was the primary purpose). The schools are supposed to teach reading, writing and arithmetic. Instead bureaucrats are using schools take control of people’s bodies.

A more respectful approach would be to forbid anyone with a contagious illness from attending school.  Since some students might be contagious before showing symptoms, the admins could adopt healthy policies used by workplaces and hospitals, such as asking students to practice good hygiene, posting signs encouraging people regularly wash hands, and providing hand disinfectant dispensers.

These tactics take work. It’s easier for our totalitarian rulers to simply inject potentially worthless and harmful vaccines into imprisoned students. If a private organization tried this approach, customers would go elsewhere, and this is why you don’t see movie theaters and gyms requiring vaccines.

Fight Back

If you don’t want to get the flu vaccine, make up any excuse to avoid it. Say your allergic to eggs. Get your parents involved. Threaten to transfer to another school. Or just leave and try home schooling. Someone at your school got an exemption. You can too.

New York state health care workers are protesting flu vaccine mandates. They yelled, “No more shots,” and argued the state does not own their bodies. Your school doesn’t own your body either!

A flu shot permanently harmed this woman. Don’t let it happen to you:

Please note, this column is not providing medical advice. Please speak to your physician for your medical needs.

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The measure has so much community support that some school board members are using the proposal as part of their campaign platform. The sponsor of the bill is on the school board and she says she proposed the bill in response to her 44,000 constituents.

One board member opposes the change because she believes students will continue to use phones after lunch. Apparently, she thinks students can turn off phone when they arrive in the morning, but not when they leave lunch period. The board member also fears teachers will have to become cell phone police, taking time away from their teaching. She fails to concede teachers already have to enforce the cell phone rule. During the first class period of the day, some students likely forget to turn off their phones and occasionally one might ring. With the change, there might be a few phone rings during the class period after lunch.

The change may actually reduce cell phone use during school hours because students can make calls or send texts during lunch. The students won’t have to squeeze in these texts during or between classes. The current cell phone rule is a great example of unintended consequences. Banning cell phone use at all times makes it more likely students will use phones during class.

Not surprisingly, a company that offers consulting services about school violence opposes the idea on the grounds that it will – wait for it – jeopardize school safety. Yes, these consultants believe calling your mom during lunch could lead to violence.

Take action!

Start a campaign to allow cell phone use during lunch at your school. Contact all the school board members and explain that school board members in Montgomery, Maryland, are promoting this idea when they run for office because of the idea’s popularity. Once the board members learn the idea can help them get elected, they will pay attention. Then you could find some classmates to launch a campaign to support the change.

You could first try to find one board member who will introduce the proposal. Then you could lobby (convince) the other board members to support the change. Get parents involved as they will want the opportunity to speak with their children during lunch. If you don’t get anywhere, you could start with a proposal to allow texting during lunch.

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Fortunately, the school did not stop students from exercising their free speech rights. However, those who skipped class may face three-day in school suspensions. The police showed up during the protest and forbid students from leaving the campus. The police even tackled and cuffed one student who tried to leave.

The Kingston school district is one of only three in New York state that actually allows students to leave during lunch. Students in the other 54 school districts show up for prison each day, can’t leave for another six hours, and must eat cafeteria food.

According to some students, the school’s cafeteria can’t even accommodate all the students, and that’s the main reason they let students leave campus during lunch. Already some students must eat lunch at 10:30 a.m. – a time for snacks in the real world. One student suggested a better protest would have been for all students to show up at the cafeteria during their assigned lunch periods to prove the cafeteria is too small. However, this would have placed the focus on the cafeteria size, not the basic freedom to leave school when not in class. The students don’t want a larger cafeteria; they want to go out for lunch.

Junior Kyle Russo said leaving campus refreshes him. Uh oh! The administrators can’t have refreshed students. Must keep students one heart beat above a coma to make them more susceptible to government propaganda!

Since offense if the best defense, the students could also try to roll back the restriction on freshman and sophomores. This will force administrators to DEFEND the existing restriction, instead of applying the restriction to juniors and seniors.

Take action:

• Read the original article and post a comment in defense of people’s right to leave school when not in class!
• If you are allowed to leave campus during lunch, do it. Exercise your limited freedoms before school dictators take them away.
• Stage a protest against your school’s closed campus! But don’t skip class!
• Share this article with a friend

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More than 40 students were accused of attending the party. All students involved with an extra-curriculur activity were given suspensions from those activities. 30 of the students accepted the punishment. But 10 of the students (Libertarian Rockstars) filed a suit against the school charging that they were denied “any of the due process and procedural safeguards available” as a student attending Walpole High School.

The punishments against the students are as astonishing as the protests by the students and parents. Several of the parents complained that the police compiled a list of partygoers based on hazy second-hand accounts. The police did not show up at the party. Instead they learned about the party from someone who attended the party and then, through interviews, compiled the list of partygoers. Parents also complained that many students attended the party but did abstained from alcohol.

According to Massachusetts law, “mere presence” at a party with alcohol available to minors does not consistute underage drinking. However, the local police chief, who lead the Soviet-style roundup, said Massachusetts courts have ruled that teenagers are guilty of possession of alcohol when they attend a party where they have access to beer, even if they abstain. One wonders whether this applies to the typical six-pack of beer or bottle of wine that is present in most households.

The courts will ultimately decide and the winds of justice appear to be in favor of the teenagers at the moment. Many thanks to the teenagers and parents who are taking the time to fight the suspensions.

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Parents and students had strongly opposed the uniform policy prior to the protest. One parent even handed out more than 200 armbands to students. When school administrators learned of the protest, they announced that those who wear armbands would receive three-day suspensions. Despite the threat, many of the students still wore the armbands. As they arrived at school, they were directed into a room with a sheriff and two deputies, and they subsequently received suspensions.

ACLU attorney said, “When government officials try to intimidate people from exercising their free speech rights, and punish them because they don’t like what they have to say, it’s a serious free speech violation. The students who had the courage to wear a simple armband are faced with failing grades and exclusion from school activities. Watson Chapel School District has had every chance to prevent this, but they have refused to correct their mistakes. These parents have no choice but to file a lawsuit to protect their children’s rights.”

The case is related to a 1969 court decision known as “Tinker” in which the United States Supreme Court stated the symbolic speech and peaceful expression is protected by the First Amendment.

Clearly, the school administrators did not take History 101. They not only overlooked the Tinker court decision. They also forgot why all of us are here in America: we want freedom. We want the right to free expression. And when some brazen, out-of-touch, control-freak government officials try to repress us, we want to the right to protest peacefully. Fortunately, we still have the right to sue these officials.

More info:http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/youth/27038prs20061010.html

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