Editorial: Freedom squelched at California school

Talk about it

Call it what you want, but what happened in a California high school on Cinco de Mayo last week is more about incompetence than anything else.

For anyone who missed it: Five students at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Calif., were sent home Wednesday because they had worn American Flag shirts and bandannas that day — and refused to turn the shirts inside out or remove the bandannas when asked. Being it was Cinco de Mayo, the administrators’ logic went, it was insenstive to the school’s large Mexican-American population to wear such apparel on this particular day. (An entirely separate point: The Flag Code specifically states the U.S. Flag should never be worn.)

It should go without saying that writing anything about this news item in this space will almost certainly provoke incendiary commentary. In this case, however, we don’t cast blame with students attending Live Oak High School, regardless of their ethnicity. People will say what they want about another country’s holiday being observed on our soil, and will no doubt speculate about their immigration status — but those debates are secondary to the central question of “what were they thinking” that must be asked of those in charge of the school.

Being welcoming to people of different nationalities should not involve compromising freedoms we enjoy as Americans. At Live Oak High School, the freedom of expression of some was severely compromised while that of others was protected. This wasn’t just wrong — it was un-American, and likely unconstitutional.

Tags: american flag, opinion, editorials, freedom