Lesson on the Bill of Rights

Caught this at No Quarters.

Selina Jarvis is the chair of the social studies department at Currituck County High School in North Carolina, and she is not used to having the Secret Service question her or one of her students.

But that'’s what happened on September 20.

Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class "“to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights,"” she says. One student "“had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb'’s down sign with his own hand next to the President'’s picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster."”

According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent.

Interesting choice of demonstration. But then the comedy begins.

But over at the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to be developed, this right is evidently suspect.

An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service.

On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High."“At 1:35, the student came to me and told me that the Secret Service had taken his poster," Jarvis says. "“I didn'’t believe him at first. But they had come into my room when I wasn'’t there and had taken his poster, which was in a stack with all the others."

The Secret Service was just doing there job, I wonder if something more important couldn't been being investigated, but with the world today, I guess that they have to investigate everything.

"“Halfway through my afternoon class, the assistant principal got me out of class and took me to the office conference room,"” she says. "Two men from the Secret Service were there. They asked me what I knew about the student. I told them he was a great kid, that he was in the homecoming court, and that he'’d never been in any trouble."

Then they got down to his poster.

"“They asked me, didn'’t I think that it was suspicious,"” she recalls. "“I said no, it was a Bill of Rights project!"”

At the end of the meeting, they told her the incident "“would be interpreted by the U.S. attorney, who would decide whether the student could be indicted,"” she says.

The student was not indicted, and the Secret Service did not pursue the case further.

"Decide whether the student could be indicted." No Quarters called that a final threat, which sounds accurate to me. Did they really need to make such a statement? Maybe without full context of that discussion, it's difficult to make an intelligent conclusion.

Seems that that student learned an important lesson. Your actions have consequences and the investigation doesn't mean your rights are being trodden upon.

But then as lessons go, this was a caning where a kind word would have been sufficient.