A Valuable Lesson In Citizenship

Several bloggers have been tracking the treatment of 18 students at Morton West High School (Illinois) who were facing expulsion for an anti-war demonstration on November 1. I learned about the situation from Avedon Carol, who got the story from Arthur Silber.

Well, today the Chicago Tribune reports that the issue is close to being resolved. No students will be expelled, although the length of the suspensions doled out do look suspicious.

Morton West High School officials, under fire recently from parents and free-speech advocates for threatening to expel students involved in an anti-war sit-in at the school, announced Tuesday that they will not expel any of the protesters.

District 201 Supt. Ben Nowakowski said in a statement that 14 of the 18 students who faced expulsion will be cleared to return to class Wednesday and that four students who bore more culpability for the disruption can return to class Friday.

"The incident that led to the suspensions had nothing to do with our students' 1st Amendment rights," Nowakowski said in the statement.

Well, that statement that the suspensions didn't have anything to do with the students' First Amendment rights is patent bullshit. Of course it did. The students sat down in the cafeteria and refused to leave as a form of protesting the war. Their refusal to leave at the time the school decided was part of that protest.

Here's the official reason for the punishment:

School officials charged 38 students with "gross disobedience and mob activity" for taking part in a Nov. 1 sit-in at the school cafeteria to protest the war in Iraq. ...

Nowakowski said the suspensions were doled out because students disrupted the school day. "While we respect the rights of students to express their views, that must be done in such a way as to respect the rights of the other 3,400 students at Morton West who are entitled to a peaceful, disruption-free school day," he said in the statement.

Um, Mr. Nowakowski, they were in the cafeteria, and at least one teacher noted during the School Board hearings that neither her class room nor others were in any way affected by the protest. It was a peaceful demonstration, not one with thrown Molotov cocktails and window smashing. Pretty tame stuff, and, I believe, quite effective.

Here's the important lesson for those young people, however. Sometimes there will be consequences when one decides to confront the power structure over perceived evil. In fact, if the evil is bad enough and the power structure strong enough, there certainly will be consequences. Each action will have a reaction. Those who are committed will brave those consequences because it is the only way to draw attention to the evil and to bring about change. It's the flip side of that nausea- inducing garbage doled out by the current administration and military recruiters: freedom isn't free.

So, those eighteen youngsters did the right thing, and I am quite proud of them and of their parents for standing by them.

I just hope the eighteen veterans who were arrested in Boston for protesting a policy of the American Legion have similar success.

Update on the Boston 18: here's something you can do to help.