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Students face expulsion under strict speech policy adopted by Va. school board
Newspaper editor says change will not impact school media
June 5, 2002
VIRGINIA — Using racial epithets — even in the spirit of camaraderie — may lead to the expulsion of students in Prince William County Public Schools beginning next fall.
The school board voted 7-1 on May 22 to adopt the change in the district's code of conduct after an uproar over students singing along to a popular song that included the lyric "nigger" during a school basketball game.
"We want to make sure that students know that that's not acceptable," said Clarice Torian, Prince William's director of student services who helped draft the addendum. "What we're trying to do is to specify or make clear what we currently have in the code of behavior."
Student media will not be affected by the district's vote. Katie Flanagan, news editor of Woodbridge High School's paper The Valkyrie, said the paper's current policy already limits the use of racial terms.
Torian said the purpose of the policy is to prevent misunderstandings that can cause fights. Before the revision, the policy asked that "[a]ll persons and groups within the school are to be treated with dignity and respect" and banned discrimination by action, gesture, statement, dress or symbol. Violations resulted in corrective action including expulsion.
The two-sentence addendum maintains that "[t]he use of ethnic and/or cultural references, or other language that is reasonably understood to disparage, incite, humiliate, or degrade an individual, a race, or a group regardless of the intent will not be tolerated in school. This includes language that originated from the lyrics of popular music that may be used in casual conversation."
Superintendent Edward Kelly said the school did not look for precedent in adapting the new policy. "There is precedent in saying that language and behavior that is racial in nature or is sexist or of a type that puts down people of different cultures is not tolerated."
While students and administrators will have to wait to see the policy's effects until fall, concern has already been raised about use of racial terms in casual conversation.
School board member Steve Keen tallied the lone dissenting vote in disapproval of sanctions because they punish students regardless of intent. Flanagan, a junior, also sees the possibility for confusion because of everyday use of such offensive terms.
"I definitely think this will cause problems," she
said. "A lot of people just use words and don't think about
what they actually mean."
© 2002 Student Press Law Center
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