Opinion Page columns

Unless otherwise noted, these essays were published in the Republican-American newspaper, Waterbury, CT
 

FREE SPEECH SHOWDOWN IN NORTHWEST CONN.

By Bill Dunn

Is free speech really free? That’s what the Avery Doninger case is all about.

Ms. Doninger, now a senior at Lewis Mills High School in Burlington, Conn., posted some derogatory comments about school administrators last year on an Internet weblog. School officials were not very thrilled when Ms. Doninger—in a fit of pique over a school social event scheduling change—referred to them as, um, feminine hygiene products, and encouraged other students to pester the superintendent, just “to p*** her off more.”

School principal Karissa Niehoff subsequently barred Doninger from serving as a class officer because of the crude comments. Soon after, Doninger’s parents filed a lawsuit, claiming their daughter’s constitutional right to free speech had been violated.

And soon after that, a group of area journalists, writers, and assorted counter-culture holdovers from the 1960s took up the cause and held a fundraiser. The rallying cry was something like, “The First Amendment is being trampled by fascist school officials! To arms! To arms!” (OK, they didn’t really say, “To arms!” since they believe in the First Amendment but not the Second.)

Although Doninger’s parents and other supporters claim this is a free speech issue, it is clear they are not focusing on the right to free speech; instead they want consequence-free speech.

As far as I can tell, no representative of the government has prevented Ms. Doninger from expressing her views. She is perfectly free to post crude comments on websites all day long. She can write a personal manifesto, print 1,000 copies at Staples, and pass them out to everyone she meets. She can stand on a soapbox in downtown Burlington (if there actually were a downtown Burlington) and scream insults about school officials until she’s hoarse. Her right to speak freely has not been violated.

What Ms. Doninger and her supporters are demanding is consequence-free speech—the right to say whatever you want but not take any responsibility for it. Look at it this way: If I started telling my company’s clients that the owner of our firm is a jerk and an unscrupulous businessman (not true, by the way), no one from the government will stop me from speaking. My right to free speech will stay intact. But if I did that, in a very short time I would find myself unemployed, and rightfully so. That would be the consequence for what I had said.

Now, could the school officials have handled the Doninger case a bit more tactfully? Probably. It seems public school administrators, maybe in an effort to justify their existence (do we really need THAT many non-teaching positions?!), like to turn molehills into mountains. Was the penalty meted out to Ms. Doninger too severe? In my view, yes. Maybe a more reasonable punishment could have been to require that she make a public apology and submit a 2,000-word essay titled, “The difference between free speech and consequence-free speech.”

However, the school leaders made their decision, and our nation’s founding documents do not say that people are endowed by their Creator with an unalienable right to hold the position of Senior Class Secretary. It’s certainly reasonable that schools set minimum academic and citizenship standards for students who hold special positions. Spewing nasty remarks about school leaders on a public internet forum might fall a tad short on the citizenship standard.

This situation could’ve been an excellent learning experience for Ms. Doninger. She could have learned that there can be consequences when exercising the right to free speech. But no, that’s not the lesson she is learning. Her parents and her other supporters are teaching her a quite different lesson: when you get in trouble for doing something wrong, claim that you are a victim and hire a lawyer.

Unfortunately, Ms. Doninger is not the only person who has learned this loony lesson in recent decades.

©2008