Student Lulabel Seitz Exercised Her First Amendment Rights--and Was Cut Off!

All over the news - Lulabel Seitz, a senior at California's Petaluma High School, gave a commencement speech in which she mentioned her sexual assault, which she said happened on school property. The school cut off her microphone before she could finish her speech.

It seems that:

1. The school specifically asked her not to discuss her sexual assault during the speech.
2. She had a prepared text, which the school approved in advance. She was told not to vary from the script.
3. She persisted anyway.
4. Later, she posted her entire speech on the Internet. 

Bill of Rights, National Archives

Some of her classmates shouted, "let her speak," while others thought that it was inappropriate for her to talk about her sexual assault at graduation. A case could be made either way, I suppose. However, as a former speech professor, I am a big First Amendment advocate. If she wanted to deliver a tasteful but pointed discussion of her sexual assault, I say to let her do it. She earned the right by being the best student in the school, and maybe the school should have supported her better. However:

• Institutions always seem to defend themselves. The assault was surely an embarrassment to the school, and, if they indeed handled it poorly (I have no knowledge of that one way or another, but many schools do handle sexual assault poorly), they are going to be more embarrassed. 
• If the school had let her speak, she would have gained some attention, and might have made the school look bad.
• By calling attention to sexual assault in schools, Seitz performed a service. Public officials usually don't improve unless someone forces them to do so. 
• When they cut her off, Seitz got on the national news, and hundreds of thousands of people watched her full speech on YouTube. So, the school's attempt to cut her off was a big, counterproductive failure. As usual. 
• A basic principle of public relations is that the truth always comes out, and coverups are always a mistake. By trying to silence Seitz in what looked like an effort to protect the school's image, the school officials just made their image worse. That was very predictable.
• Students do not leave their First Amendment rights at the school door. The Supreme Court ruled in the case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District as follows:

"In order for the State in the person of school officials to justify prohibition of a particular expression of opinion, it must be able to show that its action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint." Legal scholars disagree about whether the courts would consider the school to have violated Seitz' rights.

To live in a free society means that we will often be exposed to unpopular and controversial viewpoints. If Seitz's speech disturbed her classmates or school officials, well, so be it.

Of course, in the Internet Age, school officials can't avoid embarrassment just by cutting off a microphone. In an effort to avoid controversy, they just made themselves look petty.

The First Amendment doesn't exist to protect powerful people or public organizations (like schools!). It exists to protect people who want to stir things up.


Note that I have previously posted about the importance of free speech on college campuses:

• Why free speech on campus is important.  
• A college controversy when conservative scholar Charles Murray came to speak on campus.  
• Charles Murray spoke on another college campus and the world didn't end. 
• A college controversy when a liberal professor wanted to teach liberal ideas.

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