Back again when I was in higher college (pun intended!) this is the variety of stunt you laughed like insane about, but soon after you got caught, you apologized, accepted your punishment, and that was the conclude of it. But presently, when a student’s juvenile exuberance prospects him to exhibit a banner that cracks up his cohorts but humiliates the substantial university administrators, he as an alternative sues all the way to the Supreme Court in excess of his suspension.

The time was January 2002, and the event was the passing of the Olympic Torch by means of that snowy Alaskan city of Juneau. Of program, Joseph Frederick, the defendant in this situation, was warned that any inappropriate behavior when the torch handed by (and the National media confirmed their town’s substantial faculty to the entire world) would not be tolerated, but apparently the prospect was way too excellent for jokester Joe to pass up. For as the cameras whirled and the torch paraded past the large university (with all the dutiful pupils standing outside), Frederick and the dudes unfurled a fourteen-foot banner on national tv which study “Bong Hits four Jesus.” Juneau High School Principal Deborah Morse angrily confiscated the indicator and suspended Frederick for ten days for “advocating unlawful drug use,” if not downright idiocracy. But the kicker arrived when Frederick (who claimed he was just having entertaining) brought the scenario to court on the guise Juneau Large violated his appropriate to liberty of speech.

Well boys and girls, 5 many years have handed, which should indicate the Supreme Court docket is now about to hear this situation of large college hi-jinx Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg certainly demonstrates her age when she suggests “… it isn’t very clear that this [signifies] ‘smoke pot.'” Justice Stephen Breyer is undoubtedly closer to the middle with his remark, “If kids go about having banners producing a joke out of drug use, that genuinely can make it tougher for me to influence learners … not to use medicines,” but I think it is Main Justice John Roberts Jr. who truly hits the nail on the head, or the pot in the pipe as the scenario might be. “There’s a broader concern,” states Roberts, “of whether principals or teachers … have to concern that they’re likely to pay out of their individual pockets each time they consider steps pursuant to set up procedures.”

It just so occurs that (regrettably) I am now a little bit of an specialist on each sides of the concern. bong Australia In higher university, I not only smoked cannabis, but my poem “Stoned” was every bit the anthem in my Midwestern 70s town that Dylan’s ballad “Everyone Must Get Stoned” was in its 60s heyday. But I have not partaken in pot in a quarter of a century and, as for Jesus, “the medication of immortality”–the every day Eucharist–has changed cannabis as my drug of choice. I nonetheless chortle at times at Cheech & Chong movies and occasionally nevertheless even study “Stoned” (which nonetheless will get the most laughs of anything I have created before or given that) but ONLY in relationship with my afterwards poems such as “The Convert” or “The Limitless River and the Timeless Tree” to display that my life, like that of the other Augustine’s, has transformed from wayward youth to pursuit of Fact.

The genuinely funny (this time, “humorous” as in “ironic”) thing about this situation is that, in the ensuing five a long time considering that the situation started, Joseph Frederick has grow to be a teacher (in China, no significantly less!) himself. Of course, Joe has not, like myself, experienced the double lesson/blessing of currently being a teacher AND father, nor has he experienced as several many years of expertise. But, presented all that (and making it possible for for the fact the Chinese children might be a tad much more respectful of authority), I am nevertheless shocked ol’ “Bong Hit” Joe hasn’t yet realized the require for college student restraint. Ideally the Supreme Courtroom will get this one right, but if they don’t, this former stoner may individually just take a sluggish boat (loaded with lots of silly-druggie banners) to China, find out Mr. Frederick’s classroom, and endeavor to encourage him myself.