Student Rights

If you were to walk down the halls of Deerfield High School, you might see students wearing drug related clothing or accessories, or you might hear F-bombs being thrown into an average students conversations. At Deerfield, we students get a lot of freedom to express our feelings or opinions, saying that, in my past years here there has never been a situation that could connect to John and Mary Beth Tinkers situation. If you ever heard of the Tinker v. Des Moines case in 1969 you'd know exactly what I am talking about. Those two students decided to wear armbands to protest the Vietnam War., and ended up being suspended for not taking them off. The question is did they have constitutional rights to wear those arm bands freely? Answer: Yes they did. The Supreme Court ruled that the schools policy was unconstitutional.

In my years at Deerfield I have never experienced problems related to free speech similar to that. The question that stands is, could I imagine that happening at Deerfield? Answer: no. Students at Deerfield, whether they believe so or not, have more rights than most schools. The question is, do those students abuse their rights as high school students? Yes there were times throughout my high school career where I thought things were unfair. Some of those times included, not being able to park at school until senior year, or not being able to leave this campus until 3:14 every day, free period or not. Yes at my school there are things I do always enjoy, but the freedom of the students is better than at most schools. Think about having closed hallways, were you have to have a pass in your hand every time you enter the hallway, or study hall instead of a free period, were you had to stay in a quiet room for a hour or more doing nothing but work. What if we had school uniforms, then we would have no freedom to choose what we wore every day.

There are times when teenagers take advantage of all the freedom we do get compared to other school in the area. They are always looking for bigger and better things, and they never stop to smell the coffee. They never stop to appreciate what they have. I am a victim of this also. There are times when I don't appreciate what I have, and I’m not going to lie, before righting this blog I never thought  much about the rights I have as a student, I too, took it for granted.

Students at Deerfield are able to freely express their political views. They are able to wear Obama shirts, or shirts against Obama. Maybe we have this freedom because of the tinker case, but for whatever reason, we do have these freedoms and we shouldn’t take them for granted.

One thing I can think of that is not allowed or that has gotten students in trouble in the past, is wearing clothing that promotes drugs or alcohol abuse. In the Morse v. Frederick case, Frederick did not have the constitutional right to make a sign about drug abuse at a school related event. Here at Deerfield that is probably something that would not be tolerated and should not be tolerated. There are lines that students should not want to or need to cross, and that is one of them. There is no reason to openly make comments like that. It’s important to be respectful of school grounds, so those types of shirts and comments are unnecessary.