MY NEW HERO
Emma Sullivan
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Kansas teenager who wrote a disparaging tweet about Gov. Sam Brownback said Sunday that she is rejecting her high school principal’s demand for a written apology. Emma Sullivan, 18, of the Kansas City suburb of Fairway, said she isn’t sorry and doesn’t think such a letter would be sincere. The Shawnee Mission East senior was taking part in a Youth in Government program last week in Topeka, Kan., when she sent out a tweet from the back of a crowd of students listening to Brownback’s greeting. From her cellphone, she thumbed: “Just made mean comments at gov. brownback and told him he sucked, in person (hash)heblowsalot.” She actually made no such comment and said she was “just joking with friends.” But Brownback’s office, which monitors social media for postings containing the governor’s name, saw Sullivan’s post and contacted the Youth in Government program. Sullivan received a scolding at school and was ordered to send Brownback an apology letter. She said Prinicipal Karl R. Krawitz even suggested talking points for the letter she was supposed to turn in Monday.
A couple of days ago, I wrote about Emma Sullivan, an 18-year-old high school senior in Kansas who’s in the process of learning that free speech is all too often only free when it’s Conservative speech.
Ms. Sullivan was ordered to write a letter of apology to Gov. Brownback by her principal, Karl Krawitz, who evidently forgot that a school has neither a right nor a reason to be exercising control over a student’s private, personal communications. Yes, Ms. Sullivan’s tweet could be held to be juvenile, and she could perhaps have chosen her words more carefully, but it was typed to friends on her personal cell phone. The appropriateness and/or maturity of Sullivan’s tweet is nothing that Krawitz should or does have any jurisdiction over. All he’s really doing is showing what cowards and bullies do when their Conservative masters pitch a fit. Krawitz has no jurisdiction over Sullivan’s (constitutionally guaranteed) free speech, but, like so many self-important school administrators, he determined it was time to teach Sullivan a lesson. After all, if you don’t knock dissent down at an early age, you might just grow up with an independent-thinking Liberal on your hands.
To her credit, Sullivan has decided to refuse to comply with Krawitz’ order that she write a letter of apology. The question now becomes if Krawitz will do the right thing by admitting he was wrong…or does he play hardball and risk getting sued?
Krawitz may feel he has the absolute right to exercise control over a student in his school (His doman, his rules, no?), and in some respects he’s absolutely correct. The Supreme Court has held that students don’t have the same 1st Amendment rights that adults do…but Sullivan’s tweet was not done using school property and it was sent to her friends, not to the general public and not in any capacity where she was representing the school. I may not be an attorney, but I really think that at the very least Sullivan occupies the moral high ground in this case. Krawitz looks like a Conservative weenie who can’t stand the idea of a student thinking independently and expressing unapproved (i.e.- Liberal) thoughts.
I applaud Ms. Sullivan for doing the adult thing and standing up for her 1st Amendment rights. There are too many bullies today willing to proscribe any form of speech and expression they happen to disagree with or find offensive. Sometimes it takes someone willing to take the heat and courageously stand up for themselves to reinforce that freedom of speech and expression isn’t the sole purview and property of Conservatives.
It’ll be interesting to see who blinks first.
