Why we support the rights of a student suspended for posting memes of principal | Opinion
“Student pokes fun at principal” is a tale as old as time. “Principal suspends student for sharing memes about principal outside of school” is a distinctly more contemporary story, one in which an unlucky 17-year-old unwittingly became the main character in August 2022.
That’s right. A rising senior at Tullahoma High School — then a 16-year-old junior — incurred a three-day out-of-school suspension for three memes on his Instagram account depicting his principal, Jason Quick, in a creative array of contexts. One shows the principal holding a box of vegetables and is captioned “My brotha.” Another, which the student merely reposted, depicts Quick as an anime cat wearing a dress. And the third features Quick’s face on an image of a videogame character being hugged by a cartoon bird.
The memes were posted off school grounds and outside school hours (two during summer vacation), and they caused no disruption at school. Still, they caught Quick’s attention. Upon discovering the images, he and Assistant Principal Derrick Crutchfield claimed the student violated a school policy prohibiting students from posting images on social media that “embarrass,” “discredit” or “humiliate” other students or school staff, leaning on this to justify the suspension.
But such a subjective policy threatens students’ First Amendment rights, sweeping in a vast array of protected speech. That’s one of a few reasons the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a national free speech advocacy nonprofit, is standing up in defense of the student. With a newly filed First Amendment lawsuit, FIRE aims to vanquish Tullamore High School’s speech-chilling policies and vindicate students’ right to meme freely.
The content that teenagers post on their social media is between them and their parents — not government officials. Administrators at public high schools have no business regulating constitutionally protected expression that students post away from school grounds, and that doesn't cause a disruption. Maintaining this standard is particularly important today, as young people increasingly communicate online rather than in person, meaning their exchanges might be more visible to hovering administrators.
Students punished for such speech are sure to learn the wrong lessons about their rights: namely, that the extent of those rights is determined situationally and by the whims of those in power. Incentivized to self-censor, these students will enter college and the workforce with a stunted understanding of their rights and of themselves — to the detriment of democratic norms and public discourse.
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That being said, administrators seeking to defang dank memes would better serve their students by doing nothing at all, modeling a far more constructive life skill: the ability to take a joke.
Talia Barnes is editor and staff writer at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Opinion: We support student suspended for posting memes of principal
