Nova Scotia student suspended over "Life is wasted without Jesus" t-shirt

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

if you are offended by somebody else's T-shirt, you are the problem (and a little bitch).

Stop crying, worry about something relevant.

If someone wore a T-shirt that said "Blacks are stupid n#ggers!" we should all completely accept that, especially in a school setting, because it would show our love for freedom of expression.

From what I am reading about this kid, he WANTS to piss people off... he wants to be belligerent. At least the Mormons that try to convert you on your doorstep are polite. I don't even think this kid wants to convert people to his religion. He wants to get attention... and....well.... mission accomplished.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Rathji

A Darwin shirt (at least the one you posted) does not indicate that someone who believes otherwise is wasting their life.

The way I see it, they have grounds to do this because of the policy that says...<snip>

Just because the school has a policy doesn't make following it the right decision. Maybe the policy is wrong. In this case, I'd have to say it is. Freedom of speech is the foundation of a free society, and wearing an inflammatory/offensive/whatever t-shirt should be allowed no matter what it says.

If he was actively harassing people, suspend him for that, but blindly following "the policy" is a bad idea, imo.

[MarchHare]

Freedom of speech is the foundation of a free society, and wearing an inflammatory/offensive/whatever t-shirt should be allowed no matter what it says.

I don't think you understand what freedom of speech is.

[GGG]

I really like the schools policy. Only allow positive affirming messages is a really good way of balancing freedom of expression and maintaining a non threatening positive educational environments.

I especially like how nuanced they are my life is okay life is not. The school has done a very good job of explaining the issue and drawing a line that is tough to draw.

So you might not agree where the line should be drawn but the school has done a good job explaining their position rather than just acting arbitrarily.

[Cube Inmate]

I'm so happy that I'm heterosexual!

There...that's entirely a positive message, and entirely about me. How many of you who are claiming that the "Jesus" shirt crossed some arbitrary line are now going to move the goalposts so that this positive, personal message is *also* illegal in school?

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Frank MetaMusil

Not sure if this was posted yet.....


Media Advisory: National Organization for Atheists Opposes Suspension of N.S. Pro-Jesus Student

National Organization for Atheists? CFI has a very small membership. Atheists are not especially organized or of like minds.

[Makarov]

Originally Posted by Cube Inmate

I'm so happy that I'm heterosexual!

There...that's entirely a positive message, and entirely about me. How many of you who are claiming that the "Jesus" shirt crossed some arbitrary line are now going to move the goalposts so that this positive, personal message is *also* illegal in school?

I'm not sure how one could conclude that "I'm so happy that I'm heterosexual!" is an "entirely positive message" absent any context whatsoever. There is much more to a message than just words.

[firebug]

Originally Posted by Cube Inmate

I'm so happy that I'm heterosexual!

In other words, you must be positively gay about it then.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

I don't think you understand what freedom of speech is.

Maybe you could explain it to me?

In my opinion, that should be an acceptable exercise of free speech. There's an important distinction between speech that hurts someone else (yelling "Fire" in a crowded theatre is the classic example) and speech that hurts someone else's feelings.

Part of education is learning to take in multiple sources of often conflicting information and make a judgement on which information has value. If children are sheltered from alternative viewpoints their entire lives, they won't magically be able to critically evaluate information when they turn 18.

[CKPThunder]

Originally Posted by CKPThunder

The shirt on its own isn't offensive.

Originally Posted by photon

To some it is. If your standard of what is and isn't offensive is superior to theirs you'll have to make a case for that to get anyone to accept that.

The shirt says life following any other religion other than Christianity is wasted. Not that offensive, but it goes against the rules and the rules are reasonable.

Let me just rephrase my one comment and change it to: The shirt on its own isn't offensive in my opinion. I don't envy the school board in this particular case since it looks like a situation where they will receive flak no matter what their decision would be. There obviously seems to be a lot of support for both sides of the argument.

I never said my standard of what is considered offensive was superior to anyone. I will say that in this case it differs from the school boards final decision which is why I am changed my comment to add 'in my opinion' to possibly avoid a misunderstanding.

Originally Posted by photon

Too bad being offended has nothing to do with what happened, otherwise you might have a point.

Can you elaborate on this? From what I can tell from the story, it seems that the shirt did offend some people from the school which started this entire situation. The story does seem vague in many areas which leads me to believe that they want to portray this as a freedom of speech issue. I've tried poking around to find other articles about this situation and maybe you have a link to one that shows that being offended had nothing to do with what happened. From the stories I have read so far, it does seem that some members of the student body did find the shirt offensive which is why this situation arose in the first place.

[theinfinitejar]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

Maybe you could explain it to me?

In my opinion, that should be an acceptable exercise of free speech. There's an important distinction between speech that hurts someone else (yelling "Fire" in a crowded theatre is the classic example) and speech that hurts someone else's feelings.

Freedom of speech protects you from the government, not necessarily from employers or educators. It doesn't grant you protection from other consequences of your speech (suspensions, termination of employment and so on).
In public, he's protected under freedom of speech. The school isn't bound to protect that freedom.

[Thor]

Before asking if I would be against this or not, I always think turn it around and see if it still sounds suspension worthy.

"Life is wasted without Allah (or Mohammed)"

But Photon has said all the points that I would have made, in a public school these issues around free speech are hard, I prefer to just let people do what they want as long as its not hate speech, but we all know the difficulty of free speech is putting up with stuff we don't like and defending it.

[valo403]

Originally Posted by theinfinitejar

Freedom of speech protects you from the government, not necessarily from employers or educators. It doesn't grant you protection from other consequences of your speech (suspensions, termination of employment and so on).
In public, he's protected under freedom of speech. The school isn't bound to protect that freedom.

This is a public school

[TorqueDog]

In the interest of education, I would equate this shirt with wearing a shirt that said "2 + 2 = 5".

Everyone knows it's wrong, and everyone who doesn't would if they were better educated. [insert trollface here]

[SebC]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

In the interest of education, I would equate this shirt with wearing a shirt that said "2 + 2 = 5".

Everyone knows it's wrong, and everyone who doesn't would if they were better educated. [insert trollface here]

For extremely large values of 2

[OffsideSpecialist]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

In the interest of education, I would equate this shirt with wearing a shirt that said "2 + 2 = 5".

Everyone knows it's wrong, and everyone who doesn't would if they were better educated. [insert trollface here]

But I like Radiohead

[Jacks]

Looks like the school backed down.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/05...an-of-t-shirt/

[T@T]

The kid has wacko tool written all over his smirky mug.

[Thor]

lol its the grin on these fundies that always looks the same.

[CaptainCrunch]

Religious statement or not, good for him for standing up against a stupid suspension.