Bong Hits 4 Jesus

On January 24, 2002, a Juneau-Douglas High School senior held up a 14-foot banner that read “BONG HiTS 4 JESUS” as the Olympic Torch Relay passed through the town of Juneau, Alaska. The student was immediately approached by the principal of the high school and asked to take the banner down. When Joseph Frederick did not comply, the banner was confiscated and Frederick was suspended from school for 10 days. The student appealed his suspension, but it was upheld by the Superintendent, as well as the Board of Education. Seeking to prove a point, the student then took his case to the District Court. Here, it was also upheld that the principal had the right to suspend the student and that it did not infringe on his First Amendment rights. The Ninth Circuit reversed this decision and stated that Frederick’s First Amendment rights were being violated because he was punished without the school demonstrating that his speech gave rise to a "risk of substantial disruption." Now, five years later, the Supreme Court upholds the high school’s decision to suspend Frederick and does not hold the principal financially liable. At the age of 24, Frederick says that he displayed the banner to try and provoke a response from the principal. He also says that this ordeal was set about in order to test his rights to freedom of speech and that he was not promoting drugs.

“I find it absurdly funny,” he said. “I was not promoting drugs….I assumed most people would take it as a joke.”

He asserts that the banner represents something completely different than drug paraphernalia or religion.

"What the banner said was, 'Look here, I have the right to free speech and I'm asserting it.' I wasn't trying to say anything religious, anything about drugs," Frederick said in a telephone news conference from China, where he now teaches English and studies Mandarin.

This is a case that causes one to question their true rights. The banner was displayed on a public street, not on school grounds. However, since it was an event that was sanctioned by the school, the school had the right to suspend the student for a banner that referenced drugs. The ruling from the 1969 case of Tinker v. Des Moines states that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Yet this is exactly what occurred. A student was at a school-promoted event and held up a banner that had a drug reference.

While this might be considered offensive by some people, I think it is ridiculous that it is considered a probable reason to suspend a student. While there should be some limitations to what is said or read in a classroom, these limitations should be lifted once off school grounds. But, I, obviously, being an American citizen, am in no place to make this sort of judgment.