We The People Students Talk about Free Speech

On Tuesday, Sept. 19, We the People, The National Division D Award winning program at Sheridan High School, celebrated Constitution Week. (September 17-23), with a special program that was open to the public.

Master of ceremonies was Dr. James McConnell, assistant professor of political science at the University of Wyoming, and co-director of Wallop Civic Engagement Program at UW. His expertise focuses on civil rights, civil liberties and the courts.

He introduced Isabel Wallop, member of Colonial Dames of America, who spoke about constitution week.

Four We the People students, Maria Foreman, Georgia Gould, Allison Ligocki and Grace Hinton, held a mock congressional debate, the subject was free speech.

Judges were Pat McCune, who retired after a 40 year career as an attorney and bank executive in Pennsylvania; Ryan Schasteen, technology director at SCSD#2; and Dr. Jean Garrison Professor of Political Science at UW. The facilitator was Kim Ferguson, English teacher a SHS.

The prompt question was,

The students, beginning with Gould, followed by Foreman, Ligocki and Hinton, answered the question this way.

One question McCune asked the students was “when does the right to protest become an act of sedition?”

Students Gould and Foreman answered his question.

After the debate, there was a zoom presentation Free Speech for Students, by free speech campaigner Mary Beth Tinker, who, as an eighth grader in Iowa, was suspended for wearing a black armband mourning the deaths in Vietnam. She talked about free speech and the civil rights movement. She mentioned that this year marks the 60th anniversary of the bombing of a black church that killed four young girls in Birmingham, Alabama. In mourning for the young girls, people began wearing black arm bands.

Some years later, when the United States entered the Vietnam War, Tinker said,

They were suspended for wearing the arm bands in school. After the youngsters were suspended, the ACLU stepped in and challenged the suspension in court, saying it violated the students right of free speech. The students’ actions led to a landmark ruling stating that students and teachers do not “shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate.”

The audience presented questions to Tinker, and she encouraged the students or anyone else interested to go to her web site: http://www.tinkertourusa.org

Sponsors for the event were The Colonial Dames of America in Wyoming; The National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and National Society of the Daughters of 1812.

A good-sized crowd attended the event, which was held in the SHS Auditorium.