Say What? The Principal's T-Shirt Conundrum.

You can't wear that T-shirt in MY school, declared the distraught high school principal. Oh? Why not? I have freedom of speech, don't I? replied the upset student. This quick conversation frames basic dilemma that school authorities face on an ever-increasing basis. In our social mediadriven, controversy-oriented student culture outspoken views are readily proclaimed in chat rooms, blogs, Facebook, Twitter-and on T-shirts. What should principal or school board do when confronted by any of the following T-shirt messages?Jesus is Not HomophobeNobody Knows I am LesbianKeep Calm and Hit HerBe Happy, Not GayBlack Rifles Matter (with gun image)Guns Don't Kill People, I DoI Had an Abortion and I Don't Regret ItI met God, She Is BlackWhite PowerProud AtheistWhere does student's First Amendment right to free prevail versus the school's duty to provide safe, secure, and orderly learning environment? There are no easy solutions to this conundrum, although there are number of useful analyses to help principals evaluate particular school issues and current court cases (Haynes, 2003; Lane, 2005; Zirkel; 2008 Hudson, 2011; and Stader, 2012. In this article, cases from the 1969 U.S. Supreme Court Tinker decision forward to the present are discussed in order to provide beleaguered principals and school boards with some useful guidelines for answering such questions.U.S. Supreme Court DecisionsWhile the Supreme Court has not, so far, rendered any specific rulings on school dress codes for students (including uniforms and T-shirts), the now famous Tinker v. Des Moines decision (1969) established the broad parameters that lower courts have used in subsequent cases. In the Tinker case, John and Mary Beth Tinker were sent home and then suspended for refusing to remove black armbands they had worn to school to protest the controversial Vietnam War. In the Supreme Court decision, Justice Abe Fortas declared that neither teachers nor students shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate. So long as student's speech does not cause a or disruption or invade the rights of others it is protected by the Constitution.The conundrum arises in balancing the two sides of the speech formula in school setting. In the Tinker case, the school authorities could not provide any evidence that disturbance resulted from the armbands, and then the Court ruled that the principal's action discriminated against given political viewpoint. School policies and decisions must be viewpoint neutral. The decision also noted that the had to communicate particularized message that could be easily understood by many people. The message might well be protected by the First Amendment if it is pure political (Hudson, pi50). The term expression is not mentioned in the Constitution's First Amendment list of five freedoms for citizens, but it has been accepted as logical extension of speech per se and includes nonverbal symbolic messages like armbands.Still, the ongoing speech issue is one of interpretation of terms: What exactly constitutes What would school administer say constitutes material disturbance? Or substantial disturbance? These are not easy definitions to establish in given situations! The disturbance may be real or reasonably predicted, but, again, what is reasonable may lead to different interpretations by administrators and courts. In Michigan case in 2003 (Barber v. Dearborn Public Schools) federal court ruled against school ban of T-shirt showing photograph of President George W. Bush with the words INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST in bold. The judge said the banning was more dislike of the message than fear it would cause disruption, much like the reasoning in Tinker, as this message was an apparent objection to Bush's policies in the Iraq war. …