Over the past week, two examples of the possible violation of free speech from two different ends of the spectrum have come to light.  The first comes Woodlan Junior-Senior High-School, where a sophomore wrote an article urging tolerance for people “different than you.”  Here is the AP article:

WOODBURN, Ind. (AP) — The column in the student newspaper seemed innocent enough: advocating tolerance for people “different than you.”
But since sophomore Megan Chase’s words appeared Jan. 19 in the Tomahawk, the newspaper at Woodlan Junior- Senior High School, her newspaper adviser has been suspended and is fighting for her job.
At issue is whether Megan’s opinion column advocating tolerance of homosexuals was suitable for a student newspaper distributed to students in grades 7 through 12 and whether newspaper adviser Amy Sorrell followed protocol in allowing the column to be printed.
School officials in this community of 1,600 residents, 10 miles east of Fort Wayne, contend Miss Sorrell should have alerted Principal Ed Yoder to the article because of the sensitivity of the material.
“The way we view it is the broad topic of homosexuality is a sensitive enough issue in our society that the principal deserves to know that it’s something the newspaper is going to write about,” said Andy Melin, assistant superintendent of secondary education and technology.

Then at Cary Grove High-School in Illinois, another student was actually taken to jail when he wrote a violent poem for a creative writing class.  Here’s a portion of the article:

An 18-year-old high school student faces disorderly conduct charges for writing an essay that authorities described as violent and disturbing.

Allen Lee, a senior at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested near his northern Illinois home after penning the in-class writing assignment Monday. The assignment had been to use poetic conventions to express ideas and emotions.

“At the very last sentence, I said that this teachers method of teaching could lead to a school shooting,” Lee said Wednesday. He said he’d intended the entire essay as a joke.

After reading the essay, his teacher alerted the school’s principal. District officials then reported it to the police.

“The writing assignment depicted violence, was disturbing and inappropriate, but did not contain any specific locations or names,” Cary police Chief Ron Delelio said.

You can read the entire article here.

In the former story, you have the problem of the community vs. the individual.  In the latter, you have the problem of violent thought.

But what do you think about the freedom of speech in high-school?  Do you feel like your school newspaper gets in trouble for certain types of articles?  Do you feel as if you can’t express your own viewpoint, or write about certain subjects?  I know in college, there was one class where if I expressed my true viewpoint, I’d get a C.  But if I lied about what my opinion was, I’d get an A.  It was kind of funny because the Professor was supposedly strongly in favor of free speech.