http://reason.com/blog/2018/03/15/natio ... rtion-guns
Quick summary:
But Soave's takeaway has me wondering.Julianne Benzel told CBS13 that she suspects she got in trouble for suggesting that schools administrators who condoned the student walkout might be practicing a double standard.
"And so I just kind of used the example which I know it's really controversial, but I know it was the best example I thought of at the time," said Benzel. "[If] a group of students nationwide, or even locally, decided 'I want to walk out of school for 17 minutes' and go in the quad area and protest abortion, would that be allowed by our administration?"
The protesters were doing it voluntarily. Walking out of their prisons to voluntarily engage in protest. The discussion about protest wasn't done in that voluntary walkout, but done within the state sanctioned jail, led by the state funded jailer. So the two aren't 100% analogous. On something like abortion, I'd just as soon state teachers be 100% viewpoint neutral, so even positing 'pro-life' but not 'pro-choice' is getting into sketchy territory for me. If kids bring it up, I'm not sure she should quash it, but it's definitely sketchier than just 'free to protest' and 'free to talk about protest'.Students' free expression rights should vastly outweigh the state's interest in locking kids up all day, and letting them peacefully protest gun violence seemed like the right call to me. But if it's OK to protest, it should also be OK to have a discussion about the protest. As long as no student was unjustly disciplined for political speech, it seems to me like there's little reason for parents to complain or for Benzel to be in trouble.