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Confederate Flag In Schools: A Question Of Safety Or Speech?

A person wearing a Confederate flag jacket, outside Easthampton High School on May 3, 2017.
Submitted Photo
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NEPR
A person wearing a Confederate flag jacket, outside Easthampton High School on May 3, 2017.

Can a school prevent students from wearing the Confederate flag? The school committee in Easthampton, Massachusetts, did just that this week, raising questions about the rights of students and responsibilities of educators.

Easthampton School Committee member Peter Gunn cast the only vote against the flag ban Tuesday. Gunn said schools have to be careful about restricting freedom of expression.

"The better response for this is for us to be educational and to prepare young people to have the strength of their convictions, and the the confidence and support of their community," Gunn said Monday. "For all those reasons, I would let a student wear a Confederate flag on his shirt to school. I would tell him that I disagree and I would tell him why, but I wouldn't use coercive measures to prevent him from doing it."

Natalie Piorier, a parent of two Easthampton High School students, said racial tensions have been growing for more than six months and the school should focus on student safety "instead of focusing on freedom of speech."

"Because it is not freedom of speech when you are in a school building," she said. "It is about keeping all students safe so they do not have interruption in education process."

Ask an attorney about the free speech rights of students in a public school, they'll often cite the 1969 Tinker case. Students in Des Moines, Iowa, were suspended from school after wearing black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War. At first, a U.S. District Court backed the suspensions, saying the protest disrupted learning. 

But the Supreme Court disagreed.

"The Supreme Court said 'no,'" said Bill Newman, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union. "Because undifferentiated fear or apprehension is not a basis to say that students can't speak freely in schools."

Newman said school systems need proof of substantial disruption to education before suspending First Amendment rights.

But Glenn Koocher, the executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, said some symbols -- like the Confederate flag -- can distract students from their right to obtain an education.

"If they are surrounded by symbols of hate, or symbols which they can reasonably and legitimately believe generate hatred towards them, they have the right to be free of those symbols," Koocher said.

Peter Gunn said Easthampton High School will continue to hold listening sessions with students about racial tensions. It's his hope these conversations will get the school to the point where they don't have to continue the ban on the Confederate flag.

Nancy Eve Cohen is a former NEPM senior reporter whose investigative reporting has been recognized with an Edward R. Murrow Regional Award for Hard News, along with awards for features and spot news from the Public Media Journalists Association (PMJA), American Women in Radio & Television and the Society of Professional Journalists.

She has reported on repatriation to Native nations, criminal justice for survivors of child sexual abuse, linguistic and digital barriers to employment, fatal police shootings and efforts to address climate change and protect the environment. She has done extensive reporting on the EPA's Superfund cleanup of the Housatonic River.

Previously, she served as an editor at NPR in Washington D.C., as well as the managing editor of the Northeast Environmental Hub, a collaboration of public radio stations in New York and New England.

Before working in radio, she produced environmental public television documentaries. As part of a camera crew, she also recorded sound for network television news with assignments in Russia, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba and in Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia.
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