Oklahoma student suspended for poem sues school district
By The Associated Press
08.01.00
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TULSA, Okla.— Owasso school officials overreacted when they
suspended a high school student who wrote a poem about a student who fantasized
about killing a teacher, the attorney for the suspended student contends in a
federal lawsuit.
The poem was merely "a work of fiction" that was shown only to a
friend and then forgotten until found by school officials, attorney Jim Tilly
said.
"School officials went after a fly with an anvil, rather than a
fly-swatter," Tilly wrote in the lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District
Court.
The lawsuit was brought against the Owasso School District by the
student's parents, identified only as D.G. and C.G, and the student, referred
to as M.G.
In addition to claiming that the school violated the student's
constitutional rights, they have asked the court to immediately reinstate the
student this fall. They also are seeking an order to bar identifying them in
any court papers and exclude the public from any jury trial.
Karen Long, attorney for the school district, said the case will
further define "the tender balance" between a student's First Amendment right
to self-expression and a school district's obligation to protect its students
and employees in an era marked by school violence.
Long said schools are faced with the challenge of balancing safety
with their students' rights to express themselves.
"School districts are caught in the middle," she said July 27. "They
are not predictors of which students who write things like this will actually
do anything."
According to the complaint, Tilly's client wrote the poem on May 3
while in an advanced drama class.
Tilly said his client states without hesitation that there was never
any intent to kill the teacher. Instead, Tilly said writing the poem was a
private way for his client to express frustration with an instructor who
allegedly had repeatedly belittled the student.
Tilly claims that his client showed the poem to a close friend after
class and that the two students laughed about it. Tilly said the plaintiff
"thought nothing further" of the poem until summoned to the principal's office
six days later on May 9. According to the lawsuit, someone had written on the
poem that it had been found on the floor of a schoolroom.
Tilly said his client was sent back to class after admitting
authorship of the poem and was suspended at the end of the school day when an
assistant principal phoned the plaintiff's mother.
School Principal Rick Dossett then reportedly sent a letter informing
the student's parents that their child had been suspended for the remainder of
the 1999-2000 school year and the first semester of the 2000-2001 school year
"for violation of school policy concerning a death threat to a faculty member."
The parents appealed and the suspension was reduced to the first nine
weeks of the upcoming semester. But the full-semester suspension was reinstated
by the school board after a June 5 hearing.
"The facts strongly suggest that the poem was not a sincere expression
of intent to harm or assault, and the poem therefore falls squarely within the
purview of the First Amendment core protections," Tilly wrote in his complaint.
"The vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than
in the community of American schools."
Update
Federal judge: School officials' argument can't 'hold water' in student poem case
Court orders administrators to let student return to school pending outcome of case.
08.23.00
Related
School-violence poem was protected speech, not true threat, judge rules
School officials 'went well beyond that which was permissible under the circumstances,' judge writes.
02.28.00
