H.S. Student Questioned over Anti-war Art

School officials at Proesser (WA) High School notified police after an art teacher handed over some anti-war drawings done by a 15-year-old student. According to this CNN story, “the drawing that drew the most notice showed a man in what appeared to be Middle Eastern-style clothing, holding a rifle. He was also holding a stick with an oversize head of the president on it.” The student, who ended up being grilled by the Secret Service, was not arrested, but received unspecified discplinary action at school. The district’s superintendent commented, that “it was not a freedom of speech issue, but a concern over the depiction of violence.”

April 28, 2004 by School Libraries

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3 Responses

  1. Daniel says:
    April 28, 2004 at 9:38 am

    What if it had been Osama?
    Given that the school called the Secret Service, I wonder about the “it was the depiction of violence and not the politics” claim. I wonder if the school has disciplined and invited federal authorities to interrogate kids who draw pictures of terrorist heads on a stake.

    Granted the Secret Service didn’t arrest the kid, but even questioning him seems like a terrible waste of resources.

  2. Brian says:
    April 28, 2004 at 10:49 pm

    Not mutually exclusive
    Um, when a school disciplines a student out of concern over a “depiction of violence,” isn’t that still a freedom of speech issue?

  3. rochelle says:
    April 29, 2004 at 12:34 am

    Re:Not mutually exclusive
    Was hoping someone would catch that.

    My daughter, a very bright, creative and relatively peaceful kid, tends to work out her dark side via art and writing. I’ve been called to school on a few occassions (even when she was in 2nd grade, fer cripes sake), so that teachers could “express concern” about drawings, comics, etc, and make sure that she knew such things were not appropriate. I’ve been highly amused by what school officials find alarming. One involved a “cuss coin” she designed for Roman History featuring an angry roman with cuss symbols around his head. The other was a suspense story which ended with the unfortunate demise of a Teletubbie. I thought both were just plain damn funny. But, I did explain why some people might find them troublesome and told her to expect hassles for similar work.

    I’m much more alamred by things like force-fed Channel One, “educational partnerships” with McDonalds and Pizza Hut, and bad teaching.

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