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When the opinion editors of the Wall Street Journal examined post-Palin polls, they found youth support for McCain mired at a dismal 33%, exactly where it was before he picked Palin as his veep.
They then wrote up these findings in a 750-word article titled “Palin’s Entry Gives GOP Ticket Shot at Capturing Youth Vote.”
Well played, WSJ.
An essay on free-speech rights in high schools from a First Amendment scholar:
After 12 years of censorship and regimentation, many high school students will graduate this spring with little or no idea about what it means to be a free, active and engaged citizen in a democracy. When they march across the stage to get their diploma, let’s hope someone slips them a copy of the First Amendment – with instructions on how to use it.
Far too many public school officials are afraid of freedom and avoid anything that looks like democracy. Under the heading of “safety and discipline,” administrators censor student religious and political speech, shut down student newspapers and limit student government to discussions about decorations at the prom.
Fortunately, a growing number of brave students defy the odds and take seriously what they hear about free speech in civics class…
Twenty-nine students at New Jersey’s Readington Middle School protested the reduction of lunch hour to thirty minutes by paying for their lunches with pennies. Their principal sentenced twenty-nine of them to detention, but relented under pressure a few days later.
(The pennies story comes courtesy of Rad Geek People’s Daily, which I’ve added to the blogroll.)
Finding that “the claimed interruption and disorder was really much the usual background noise of a middle and high school,” a Florida judge has overturned a school district’s ban on clothes that bear pro-gay messages.
Students at Ponce de Leon High School started sporting the messages after a lesbian student claimed the school’s principal told her that homosexuality was wrong and directed her not to discuss her sexual orientation with other students. When a rumor spread that a school assembly would feature an anti-gay speaker, students began planning a walkout.
Eight students were eventually suspended for activities relating to the protests and the walkout discussions.
studentactivism.net 
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