• Kindred spirits Kindred spirits The tricky thing about defending free speech is that you often end up defending the right to say things that may seem incidental in the grand scheme of things and may even seem divisive. The
• Kindred spirits
Kindred spirits
The tricky thing about defending free speech is that you often end up defending the right to say things that may seem incidental in the grand scheme of things and may even seem divisive.
The art faculty at St. Louis Community College at Meramec exercised its right to free speech by draping artwork at a faculty show with black plastic to protest a decision by the administration on teachers’ compensation.
In the same way, the aptly named James Lord of Dupo High School believes he is standing up for the First Amendment by insisting he should be able to sign off his morning broadcast of the school’s daily bulletin — “Tiger’s Eye News” — with the words, “God bless.”
Margaret Keller, co-director of the Meramec art gallery, passionately defended the black plastic coverings placed over individual works at the annual faculty art show. The coverings made the entire room into a new work of art, she said, likening them to the Bulgarian-American artist Christo’s wrapped buildings.
The point of the black plastic was to illustrate the impact of the college’s decision to cut back on the compensation of studio art professors. Before this year, time spent on administrative duties was valued — and compensated — as highly as time spent in the classroom. Then the administration cut the reimbursement for administrative work. Faculty members filed a grievance, but the Board of Trustees rejected it last week without a hearing.
At first, Walter Clark, the dean of humanities and social sciences, ordered Ms. Keller to remove the black plastic coverings. But after meeting with the art faculty Tuesday night he tentatively told them they could restore the wrapping.
Ms. Keller acknowledges the irony of the professors masking their art to make a political statement. But she says the artistic effect is powerful: a “glowering, thunderous silence.”
At Dupo High School, a heavy-handed interpretation of the separation between church and state led Principal Jonathan Heerboth to suspend Mr. Lord from the “Tiger’s Eye” broadcasts. Mr. Heerboth thought messages like “God bless” were not appropriate in a school setting. The School Board decided this week to reinstate Mr. Lord, as long as he does not say “God bless” too often.
That was a reasonable compromise. Mr. Heerboth probably had the authority to suspend Mr. Lord under the 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision that permitted Hazelwood school administrators to censor student speech in school programs. But the Hazelwood decision was a stingy interpretation of students’ free-speech rights — a point that Mr. Lord’s case illustrates perfectly. And Mr. Lord’s innocuous sign-off is hardly religious proselytizing.
In the greater scheme of things, these may seem like small skirmishes. But when students such as Mr. Lord and teachers such as Ms. Keller take a risk to speak out, they keep the First Amendment vital.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
