Tinker to speak VCSU Feb 18

Valley City (CSi) First Amendment Advocate, Mary Beth Tinker, will visit Valley City State University, on Wednesday, February 18, 2015.

Tinker will appear at a meet-and-greet event from 8 am to 8:50 a.m. in the Student Center Skoal Room; audience members are invited to purchase breakfast at the VCSU cafeteria or Viking I and bring their meals with them to the Skoal Room.

She is visiting North Dakota to testify on behalf of the John Wall New Voices Act (HB 1471), which would address how the Hazelwood decision is applied in our state.

Mary Beth Tinker is a national speaker on First Amendment issues related to students and education. She’s best known for the U.S. Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District.

In 1965, when she was 13 years old, Tinker wore a black armband to school protesting the conflict in Vietnam. The school said she couldn’t wear it, but she did anyway and that led her all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court decision was in her favor—that students should be free to express themselves up to the point of substantial disruption. That standard has been in place in our public high schools since 1969.

However, in 1988, the U.S. Supreme Court heard another case that negated part of the Tinker Standard: Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. The decision went in favor of the Hazelwood School District, which said that school districts could censor student journalism that was built into the curriculum. This left a paradoxical distinction that still exists today—students walking down the hallway can express themselves under the Tinker Standard, yet student journalists, who rely on the First Amendment as a foundation of their education, can be censored.

The case ended with the U.S. Supreme Court determining that the First Amendment applies to public schools and students retain their rights to free speech.

Meanwhile, Jamestown area legislators sponsor, co-sponsor a proposed house bill (1471) in the North Dakota legislature, that would give student journalists in public high schools and public and private colleges more freedom to exercise their right to free speech.

The bill will be heard by the House Education Committee Tuesday.

The bill known as the John Wall New Voices Act, was introduced to the House by its primary sponsor Rep. Alex Looysen, R-Jamestown, and is co-sponsored by Reps. Jessica Haak, D-Jamestown, Corey Mock, D-Grand Forks, and Rick Becker, R-Bismarck. In the state Senate Larry Luick, R-Fairmount, and John Grabinger, D-Jamestown, are co-sponsors as well.

A group of University of Jamestown students presented the idea for the bill to Haak and Mock toward the end of the 2013 legislative session.

Grabinger said he talked with Looysen and Haak about the bill, and he sees the need for what the bill is trying to accomplish.

A part of the bill would restore the Tinker standard for high schools referring to the landmark case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District in 1969.

The bill is also being endorsed by Mary Beth Tinker.