Devoted Reader Richard H. sent me a link, which Instapundit found as well, to a blog by Jared M., a 17-year-old Maryland high school student. What does Jared blog about? Well, on Friday, he got to report that several school officials assualted a student who was carrying a small confederate flag. And he names names:
I looked to my left, and saw a young man in the usual punk-style garb walking, Confederate flag grasped by his hip, silent. Not a second later, I saw my school's Principal, Ms. Joan Valentine, and Vice Principal Ms. Bonita Sims(both African American females), without prior warning, rush toward him. Grabbing at him, HITTING him repeatedly, they tried to hold his arms down and rip his flag away.
There was a Military Police Officer standing no more than 20 feet away, who looked on, taking no action, despite their blatant assault of this student. Passing the flag off to his friend, who, too remained silent and walked on, Ms. Valentine and Ms. Sims quickly stopped, and decided to herd them to the Officer across the sidewalk, instead...
Now, what right in the world did Ms. Valentine and Ms. Sims have to assault him? I don't care who you are, if you hit somebody without provocation, that is a crime, plain and simple. The leaders of a school, most of ALL, should be the last ones to act out in violence. Instead, they were the first and only ones.
Now, I'm sure a bunch of people reading this have already typecast me as a racist. Let me reassert myself. I believe first and foremost in freedom...Yes, I know that the Confederate flag carries a connotation that is well known. However, you cannot take vigilante action upon someone merely exercizing their rights in a reasonable manner. The administrators acted far beyond their bounds by attacking that kid...
I wasn't able to corroborate his story with any online news reports about this (but it's quite possible that the press wasn't told). However, when searching Google, I did find this little snippet from earlier in June:
A federal court in Baltimore ruled that the Department of Veterans Affairs can block a speaker from advocating that a Confederate flag be flown at a Civil War cemetery at Southern Maryland's Point Lookout. A reference to the flag was to be part of a speech during a June 14 ceremony at the former prisoner-of-war camp, where thousands of Confederate soldiers perished.
Looks like the Confederate flag is off-limits in Maryland, period - even at a Civil War ceremony, honoring prisoners-of-war who died for that flag.
The school administrators, though, if they really assaulted that kid, were way out of line (as a comparison, what kind of punishment do you think another kid who beat up a confederate flag holder would have recieved? Probably a long suspension, under "zero tolerance" rules). As the Instapundit put it, "High school bloggers will be the bane of officious principals."
Posted by kswygert at June 21, 2003 10:41 AM