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Joseph Frederick, who was suspended from high school for two weeks in 2002 for displaying a sign reading “Bong Hits 4 Jesus,” has settled his lawsuit against the school for $45,000.
Frederick displayed the sign while gathered with fellow students to watch the passing of the Olympic torch. The event took place during school hours but off school property, and his lawsuit reached the Supreme Court in 2007.
In a splintered 6-3 decision, the Court rejected the proposition that Frederick’s sign was protected by the First Amendment, but Frederick’s lawsuit continued in Alaska state court.
Under the terms of the settlement, Frederick’s suspension will be expunged from his school records, and the school district will host a forum on student speech and the constitution.
The nine members of the American River College student government who voted to endorse California’s anti- same-sex marriage Proposition 8 have survived the recall vote that attempted to remove them from office.
The vote in the recall election was nearly seven times as high as the vote that brought the student government to office — 3,531 votes, as opposed to about five hundred — but still amounted to only nine percent of the ARC student body. Each of the student government members received about 53-54% of the vote in the recall.
With the presidential election shaping up as an Obama blowout in California this year, the biggest issue on the November ballot there is Proposition 8, a measure that would overturn the state court’s recent ruling in favor of same-sex marriage.
Polls show California voters equally divided on Prop 8, and the campaign is dividing the students at American River College (ARC), a Sacramento-area community college, as well.
On September 30, the ARC student government voted 8-3 to endorse Proposition 8, and anti-8 students immediately set to work gathering signatures for a recall election to remove the pro-8 representatives from office. The recall election was held earlier this week, and votes are still being counted.
The recall highlights low voter turnout in student government elections. According to one source, only 300 students voted in the last election at ARC, a college of over 37,000 students.
Five of the representatives facing recall are Christian students from the former Soviet Union, and controversy has arisen over dual-language flyers distributed during the recall effort on behalf of those students.
One blogger had the Russian text of a flyer translated, and found that where the English-language side of the handout asked “Does responding to Student requests by passing a resolution endorsing Prop 8 (Marriage Protection Amendment) make them ‘incompetent’ or unqualified for Office?”, the Russian-language side bore this message:
Stop homosexuals! They want to silence the voices of the believers and the Slavs in our college and they want to take the light from everyone who supports marriages!
US Representative Christopher Smith, a fourteen-term New Jersey Republican, has tuition troubles.
His daughter attends the University of Virginia, and the family is saving $20,000 a year by claiming her as a VA resident — UVA’s out-of-state tuition is $14,500 a semester.
Smith’s opponent, Joshua Zeitz, was quick to jump on the revelation, saying through a spokesperson that Rep. Smith’s decision to seek in-state tuition shows “that after 28 years in Washington, he has a sense of entitlement, he thinks he’s entitled to things average folks aren’t entitled to and he ends up spending all of his life in Herndon, Va.”
Oops.
I’m in Minneapolis right now, participating in the fall leadership conference of the Minnesota State College Student Association. The MSCSA graciously invited me out to conduct a workshop, give an address, and take some questions, and they’ve been wonderful hosts. I’ll be hanging out here until tomorrow, seeing some more of the conference and continuing the conversation informally.
Thanks to everyone in MSCSA for giving me such a warm, thoughtful welcome!
studentactivism.net 
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