The opinion expressed is “we have no respect for the cheerleading coach and the team.”
Remember, this isn’t just sitting in a classroom listening to the teacher talk. Cheerleading squads travel; the coach can expect to be in situations where they are traveling to other schools, maybe staying overnight at competitions, etc., where the coach is chaperone and person in charge and person responsible for making sure the whole team gets back safe and sound. Is a student who has no respect for the coach going to be a problem when they’re several hundred miles from home? Does the coach want to risk it?
Also remember that cheerleading is dangerous: while overall injury rates are fairly low, cheerleading is the leading cause of catastrophic (e.g., brain/spinal cord) injuries among female athletes at the high school level. That means a good coach needs to know that her charges will listen to her and respect her authority when she is teaching a new skill or choreography. If a student doesn’t respect the coach, will the student decide she knows better than the coach when attempting a stunt or tumbling sequence? The chances of sustaining a concussion in AP English are normally very low, but in cheerleading, not so much, so the coach needs to certain that when she speaks, the team members will listen to and respect what she is saying.
What a load of nonsense. I wouldn’t trust any of those cheerleaders to care about anyone but themselves. That one girl is no more of a problem than any of the other spoiled brats on that squad. Some high school cheerleaders are fantastic athletes and wonderful people, but they are still teenagers and highly likely to engage in some kind of behavior unacceptable to all sorts of self important tools. The problem is not hers, it’s the school’s, they can’t act like adults and put an end to a comment a teenager made on a bad day.
I tend to agree with this. Coaches should have a great deal of control over who is on a team: it’s not the same as a class that you are legally required to join.
I mean, if the coach had kicked her off the team for “general bad attitude”, with no reference to the Snap, would the girl have been entitled to due process? Do you have to have a reason to kick a kid off a team?
Everyone is entitled to go to school. Everyone is entitled to a fair and appropriate education. But I don’t think everyone is entitled to be a cheerleader, and “general bad attitude” is reason enough–and the burden of proof is very low.
Well, sure, let this comment go. I probably would have. But more fundamentally, are they required to let every comment go, if it’s off campus? If she posted a long-winded rant about the cheer squad and her stupid coach and her incompetent team mates every day, would that be grounds to kick her off, or would it be violating her free speech?
What is the threshold of disapproval one can voice before one is being “disruptive”?
ETA: I apologize for how snarky that sounds. I wasn’t trying to pick on you or your post; honest. I think it’s a valid question that has been touched upon in this thread many times. Unfortunately, I think that each circumstance prolly needs to be evaluated; I don’t see a general way to delineate.
There is in fact a “de minimis” standard for cases making it to the Supreme Court - the Justices get to decide whether they want to hear the case or not. I think what you meant is, “I can’t believe the Supreme Court Justices made a different judgment call about whether this case is worth their time than I would”.
I think the whole point of the Supreme Court case would be that each circumstance CANNOT be delineated–the school couldn’t limit her rants however common or awful, as long as they weren’t threatening. That’s why focusing on this particular incident is beside the point: it’s the principle that is being decided.
If a student wants to post "Fuck [my high school] every day after school, I totally support that right. But if a voluntary team says “we don’t want someone that angry and divisive on our team”, I think that’s okay too.
Yeah, I cannot believe they agreed to hear this case. Whether someone makes gets kicked off a school club would seem to be beneath their contempt, and is not important enough (in my opinion) to set a real First Amendment precedent.
The problem I see with her argument is that she wants SCOTUS to determine a “bright line” and she’s not going to get that.
The case is an important one and has been needed for several years at least. I’m OK with pretty much whatever they decide, so long as everyone understands the new rules. Student free speech is an evolving and important issue, both at the secondary level and in college. Read the amicus briefs - lots to unpack there.
Assuming I understood properly, my main issue is that she didn’t say it in public. It’s one thing to have rules against bad language that tarnishes the name of your group, and having a rule you can’t say words privately.
As for signed agreements: in this context, they’re too close to being forced. They have to sign to participate in the school activity.
And cheer is a school activity. There’s no reason for athletics to occur in school if we are not treating it like something that helps with a student’s education. It would instead be some club, like youth baseball and such.
Would you be okay with an enforced agreement to be in a math class?
Ah; okay. Thanks for clarifying; I don’t disagree.
I don’t disagree with that either, in principle, although I’d hope (since it’s children we’re talking about) that the adults would initially try and help that student more rather than simply discard her or him.
Her parents may have had to sign the form as well. As far as I can tell, the young woman’s attorneys aren’t arguing that the form was not binding, merely that it constitutes a violation of her Freedom of Speech. Nonetheless, Levy’s signature, legally binding or not, signified that she understood and agreed to the rules, and her attorneys aren’t arguing that Levy’s signature signifies nothing, merely that the school’s policies constituted a violation of her freedom of speech.
I think it’s worth keeping in mind that she’s not asking SCOTUS for anything. She won her court cases already, repeatedly. It’s the school that’s asking SCOTUS to make a decision here, not the student.
She wasn’t “blasting it on social media”, though. She said it to a group of friends in a context where she had a reasonable expectation of privacy (in the ordinary sense of “reasonable”, not the legal one). If she was maintaining a “Fuck Cheer” Facebook page which she updated frequently and actively promoted to her classmates, the school’s claim to have authority to stop that would be, at least, less bad. But this was just a one-time venting of steam in what she thought was a private conversation.
That’s how it often plays out when it’s not a question of whether or not you agreed to a contract, but whether that contract was legal.
I could write up a contract, and you could sign it, and it could have all sorts of provisions in it that violate your rights. It would only be when I tried to enforce that contract that the courts would rule those provisions to be illegal and therefore non-binding.
Being too close to being forced isn’t the same as being forced. Nobody has a right to be in cheer and the state doesn’t have an obligation to provide cheer to students.
It’s already well established that schools can have a stricter criteria for students who participate in extra curricular activities. For example, in Board of Education v. Earls (Wiki Link), the Supreme Court ruled that making drug tests mandatory for students participating in extracurricular activities was constitutional. I don’t think anyone has tried it yet, but I doubt making every student take a drug test would be constitutional.
I think a key difference here is that with cheer you’re expected/required to participate in extra curricular activities. Going to cheer in competition or at a game is an extra curricular activity. A student who needs to complete their physical education requirement could easily take a PE course instead.
That said, I don’t think her suspension was fair. She didn’t post anything in public and her peers wouldn’t have found out if it hadn’t been for a fink of a friend who ratted her out.
I think this is an excellent thread and debate, but I just wanted to pick this one out. How far do we go with the “private” thing? If I have 500 Facebook friends and post something was that just a “private” communication between us? And if one of the 500 rats me out, then no harm? What about 10 or 100 or 50? Social media, IMHO, is never private.