Tomah High School Student's Artwork Censored
A Tomah High School student was punished by his teacher because he had the audacity to include an image deemed objectionable in a drawing he made as an assignment for an art class.
His drawing included a cross.
(also reported on Fox news here)
MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- A Tomah High School student has filed a federal lawsuit alleging his art teacher censored his drawing because it featured a cross and a biblical reference.
The lawsuit alleges other students were allowed to draw "demonic" images and asks a judge to declare a class policy prohibiting religion in art unconstitutional.
"We hear so much today about tolerance," said David Cortman, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal advocacy group representing the student. "But where is the tolerance for religious beliefs? The whole purpose of art is to reflect your own personal experience. To tell a student his religious beliefs can legally be censored sends the wrong message."
...According to the lawsuit, the student's art teacher asked his class in February to draw landscapes. The student, a senior identified in the lawsuit by the initials A.P., added a cross and the words "John 3:16 A sign of love" in his drawing.
His teacher, Julie Millin, asked him to remove the reference to the Bible, saying students were making remarks about it. He refused, and she gave him a zero on the project.
Millin showed the student a policy for the class that prohibited any violence, blood, sexual connotations or religious beliefs in artwork. The lawsuit claims Millin told the boy he had signed away his constitutional rights when he signed the policy at the beginning of the semester.
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The suggestion that a public institution can ask you to sign away your constitutional rights is very questionable.
The Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment applied to public schools, and that administrators would have to demonstrate constitutionally valid reasons for any specific regulation of speech in the classroom. (Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District- see below)
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The boy tore the policy up in front of Millin, who kicked him out of class. Later that day, assistant principal Cale Jackson told the boy his religious expression infringed on other students' rights.
Jackson told the boy, his stepfather and his pastor at a meeting a week later that religious expression could be legally censored in class assignments. Millin stated at the meeting the cross in the drawing also infringed on other students' rights.
The boy received two detentions for tearing up the policy. Jackson referred questions about the lawsuit to Gaarder.
Sometime after that meeting, the boy's metals teacher rejected his idea to build a chain-mail cross, telling him it was religious and could offend someone, the lawsuit claims. The boy decided in March to shelve plans to make a pin with the words "pray" and "praise" on it because he was afraid he'd get a zero for a grade.
The lawsuit also alleges school officials allow other religious items and artwork to be displayed on campus.
A Buddha and Hindu figurines are on display in a social studies classroom, the lawsuit claims, adding the teacher passionately teaches Hindu principles to students.
In addition, a replica of Michaelangelo's "The Creation of Man" is displayed at the school's entrance, a picture of a six-limbed Hindu deity is in the school's hallway and a drawing of a robed sorcerer hangs on a hallway bulletin board.
Drawings of Medusa, the Grim Reaper with a scythe and a being with a horned head and protruding tongue hang in the art room and demonic masks are displayed in the metals room, the lawsuit alleges. (Side note: Medusa is the guardian of terrifying places, either the nocturnal borders of the world or the Underworld. She reappears in this role in Dante's Divine Comedy (Inferno, IX, 55-7) and Milton's Paradise Lost (II, 611). Guarding the doorway to the world of the dead, she prevents the living from entering.)
A.P. suffered unequal treatment because of his religion even though student expression is protected by the First Amendment, according to the lawsuit, which was filed Friday.
Comments:
A.P. was out of line when he ripped up the policy in front of art teacher Julie Millin, even if she may have taunted him by claiming he had signed away his constitutional rights. In any case, that was not the proper way for A.P. to handle the dispute.
At least from the information provided in this article, my criticism of A.P. pretty much ends there.
It sounds like Millin and assistant principal Cale Jackson weren't willing to give an inch. This notion that the cross infringed on other students' rights is absolutely ridiculous.
Why would they care about A.P.'s drawing? Are they so fragile that they can't handle viewing a landscape that includes a cross?
Of course not.
I think it's ludicrous to claim that the image of a cross in any way infringed on other students' rights.
Does anyone really think that a student's drawing of something that benign in art class would be treading on the rights of others?
That's nuts.
Art is about creativity and personal expression. While I can understand the school's prohibition of violent, bloody images, I can't understand getting bent out of shape over a cross, or a Star of David, or symbols of other religions.
If as the lawsuit claims religious items and artwork are displayed at the school, then the school's reaction to A.P.'s drawing seems far too heavy-handed and terribly inconsistent.
It appears to be very selective religious censorship. Moreover, there's a problem with a school policy that equates graphic depictions of violence with religious symbols in artwork.
With such a rigid policy on religious symbols it would be nearly impossible for students to tour an art museum.
According to Tomah High School's Course Description Booklet:
The main goal of the Art Department is to provide a variety of visual experiences for the student to relate art to his/her own experiences and culture.
If that's the main goal of the Art Department, then Millin is failing as a teacher. She's actively preventing A.P. from relating his artistic expression to his "own experiences and culture."
I wonder how Millin would have reacted if A.P. drew inspiration for his project from Piss Christ, Andres Serrano's photograph of a crucifix submerged in his own urine. (see bottom of post for more on this)
In that case, would she have defended A.P.'s right to express himself and relate his art to his own experiences and culture?
http://freedomeden.blogspot.com/2008/04/tomah-high-school-students-artwork.html
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Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District,
393 U.S. 503 (1969) was a United States Supreme Court case that resulted in a decision defining the constitutional rights of students in U.S. public schools. The Tinker test is still used by courts today to determine whether a school's disciplinary actions violate students' First Amendment rights
In December 1965, Des Moines, Iowa residents John Tinker (15 years old) and Mary Beth Tinker (13 years old) and their friend Christopher Eckhardt (16 years old) decided to wear black armbands to their schools (high school for John and Christopher, junior high for Mary Beth) in protest of the Vietnam War. The school board apparently heard rumor of this and chose to pass a policy banning the wearing of armbands to school. Violating students would be suspended and allowed to return to school after agreeing to comply with the policy. Mary Beth Tinker and Christopher Eckhardt chose to violate this policy, and the next day John Tinker also did so. All were suspended from school until after January 1, 1966, when their protest had been scheduled to end.
The case
A suit was not filed until after the Iowa Civil Liberties Union approached their family, and the ICLU agreed to help the family with the lawsuit. Their parents, in turn, filed suit in U.S. District Court, which upheld the decision of the Des Moines school board. A tie vote in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit meant that the U.S. District Court's decision continued to stand, and forced the Tinkers and Eckhardts to appeal to the Supreme Court directly. The case was argued before the court on November 12, 1968. School board was not challenged.
The decision
The court's 7 to 2 decision was handed down on February 24, 1969. It held that the First Amendment applied to public schools, and that administrators would have to demonstrate constitutionally valid reasons for any specific regulation of speech in the classroom. Justice Abe Fortas wrote the majority opinion, holding that the speech regulation at issue in Tinker was "based upon an urgent wish to avoid the controversy which might result from the expression, even by the silent symbol of armbands, of opposition to this Nation's part in the conflagration in Vietnam," and, finding that the actions of the Tinkers in wearing armbands did not cause disruption, held that their activity represented constitutionally protected symbolic speech.
Justices Hugo Black and John Marshall Harlan II dissented.
Black, who had long believed that disruptive "symbolic speech" was not constitutionally protected, wrote "While I have always believed that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments neither the State nor the Federal Government has any authority to regulate or censor the content of speech, I have never believed that any person has a right to give speeches or engage in demonstrations where he pleases and when he pleases." Black argued that the Tinkers' behavior was indeed disruptive and declared, "I repeat that if the time has come when pupils of state-supported schools, kindergartens, grammar schools, or high schools, can defy and flout orders of school officials to keep their minds on their own schoolwork, it is the beginning of a new revolutionary era of permissiveness in this country fostered by the judiciary."
Harlan dissented on the grounds that he "[found] nothing in this record which impugns the good faith of respondents in promulgating the armband regulation."
Subsequent jurisprudence
Tinker remains a viable and frequently-cited Court precedent, though subsequent Court decisions have determined limitations on the scope of student free speech rights. In Bethel School District v. Fraser, a 1986 case, the Supreme Court held that a high school student's sexual innuendo–laden speech during a student assembly was not constitutionally protected. Fraser qualified Tinker in making an exception for "indecent" speech. Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, where the court ruled that schools have the right to regulate, for legitimate educational reasons, the content of non-forum, school-sponsored newspapers, also limits Tinker's application. The Court in Hazelwood clarified that both Fraser and Hazelwood were decided under the doctrine of Perry Education Association v. Perry Local Educators Association. Such a distinction keeps undisturbed the Material Disruption doctrine of Tinker, while deciding certain student free speech cases under the Nonpublic kkkkkkForum doctrine of Perry. In Morse v. Frederick, the Court held that schools may, consistent with the First Amendment, restrict student speech at a school-sponsored event, even those events occurring off school grounds, when that speech is reasonably viewed as promoting illegal drug use
from Wikepedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker_v._Des_Moines_Independent_Community_School_District.
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For some reason the `tag' John 3:16, brings to my mind a person once known as the `Rainbow man."
Millions of Americans have seen Rollen Frederick Stewart, a.k.a. "Rainbow Man", who achieved notoriety during the late 70's by appearing in the crowd at thousands of televised sporting events wearing his trademark rainbow-colored afro wig. Later -- after he became a born-again Christian - - he added a sign reading "John 3:16". Over the years, grabbing the attention of the media became an obsession for Stewart. He abandoned his home and marriage to roam the country living out of his car, studying TV Guide each week in a never-ending quest to stay televised...with tragic consequences. (This, above, from Amazon description of a documentary about him)
Rollen Frederick Stewart's problems started during his childhood in Spokane, Washington. His parents were alcoholics. His father died when Rollen was seven. His mother was killed in a house fire when he was 15. That same year his sister was strangled by her boyfriend. A shy kid, Rollen got into drag racing in high school, married his first love, and opened a speed shop. But his wife soon left him. Crushed, he sold the shop and moved to a mountain ranch where he became a marijuana farmer, tried to grow the world's longest mustache, and watched a lot of TV.
In 1976, looking for a way to make his mark, Rollen conceived the idea of becoming famous by constantly popping up in the background of televised sporting events. Wearing a multicolored Afro wig (hence the nickname "Rainbow Man"), he'd carry a battery-powered TV to keep track of the cameras, wait for his moment, then jump into the frame, grinning and giving the thumbs-up. Rollen figured he'd be able to parlay his underground (OK, background) celebrity into a few lucrative TV gigs and retire rich. But except for one Budweiser commercial, it didn't happen.
Feeling depressed after the 1980 Super Bowl, he began watching a preacher on the TV in his hotel room and found Jesus. He began showing up at TV events wearing T-shirts emblazoned with "Jesus Saves"-type slogans and various Bible citations, most frequently John 3:16 ("For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son," etc.). Later accompanied by his wife, a fellow Christian he married in the mid-80s, he spent all his time traveling to sports events around the country, lived in his car, and subsisted on savings and donations. He guesses he was seen at more than a thousand events all told.
This brings us to the late 80s. By now Rollen had gotten his 15 minutes of fame and was the target of increasing harassment by TV and stadium officials. His wife left him, saying he had choked her because she held up a sign in the wrong location. His car was totaled by a drunk driver, his money ran out, and he wound up homeless in LA. Increasingly convinced that the end was near, Rollen decided to create a radically different media character. He set off a string of bombs in a church, a Christian bookstore, a newspaper office, and several other locations. Meanwhile he sent out apocalyptic letters that included a hit list of preachers, signing the letters "the Antichrist." Rollen says he wanted to call attention to the Christian message, and while this may seem like a sick way to go about it, it wasn't much weirder than waving signs in the end zone at football games. In any case, no one was hurt in the bombings, which mostly involved stink bombs.
On September 22, 1992, believing the Rapture was only six days away and having prepared himself by watching TV for 18 hours a day, Stewart began his last "presentation." Posing as a contractor, he picked up two day laborers in downtown LA, then drove to an airport hotel. Taking the men up to a room, he unexpectedly walked in on a chambermaid. In the confusion that followed he drew a gun, the two men escaped, and the maid locked herself in the bathroom. The police surrounded the joint, and Rollen demanded a three-hour press conference, hoping to make his last national splash. He didn't get it. After a nine-hour siege the cops threw in a concussion grenade, kicked down the door, and dragged him away.
About to be given three life sentences for kidnapping, Rollen threw a tantrum in the courtroom and now blames everything on a society that's "bigoted toward Jesus Christ." A cop who negotiated with him by phone during the hotel standoff had a better take on it: "With all due respect, maybe you look at a little bit too much TV." For info on the Rainbow Man documentary, write Sam Green, 2437 Peralta St., suite C, Oakland, CA 9460
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a971107.html
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Andres Serrano (born August 15, 1950) is an American photographer who has become most notorious through his photos of corpses, as well as his controversial work "Piss Christ", a red-tinged photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass container of what was purported to be the artist's own urine.
In Melbourne at the time of the controversy Serrano said:
"I started that work as an attempt to reduce and simplify a lot of the ideas and images that I had been doing up until that time. I didn't do it to be provocative, I did it because damn, the colours would look good, you know. [clapping and cheering] I mean, sometimes I just feel like what I do has the simplest answers, but they're not good enough. People want more of a story and I try to give them a story, but sometimes I have to say: look, you're reading too much into this."
(http://www.artsandopinion.com/2004_v3_n4/pisschrist-2.htm)
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