ADVISER UPDATE
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so fast! The principal found out that we were planning on
wearing armbands.”
She wore her armband anyway — acting alone at first — and
when she did, her math teacher handed her a pink disciplinary
form and sent her to the principal’s office where the secretary
told her to surrender the armband. She did, then thought that
would end it.
The next day
But John and several others wore black armbands the next
school day. All were suspended, then negotiated and appealed
to the school board — but ultimately they aligned themselves
with the American Civil Liberties Union for representation.
The long legal battle only succeeded where it mattered the
most in the U.S. Supreme Court. John was in college. Mary
Beth celebrated at home with “ice cream and soda pop.”
“It was so influential what she did, and so important for
allowing students in school to voice their opinions openly and
to tell the stories they want to tell and broadcast,” said George
Stern, a Conestoga HS senior who as a reporter and anchor for
his Berwyn, Pa., school’s morning show interviewed Mary Beth
and even shot footage of the tour bus.
“She was pretty inspiring,” he said.
Who we are
John said that the First Amendment defines who we are and
allows us to communicate what we are — a democracy. But
in schools, he said, “Some (administrators) want students to
know their rights; some don’t. It’s important to have discussions
in schools. We’re protecting the principle of having the
discussions.”
He recalled a brief one with his father the day he left with his
armband on.
“My dad said, ‘Are you sure this is what you want to do?’”
John said. “I said, ‘To me, it wasn’t just a piece of cloth. People
were getting killed.’ So, then, my dad said, ‘Well, for you, this is
a matter of conscience.’”
John’s affair in the principal’s office included a truce offer:
If John — all of them — carried on without armbands and
dropped the cause, the principal would drop the disciplinary
case. But the principal also said, “I guess you’re not going to do
that,” John recalled.
The symbol
“We were not trying to test the limits or break the rules. We tried
to be respectful — not disruptive. In fact, we were silent. It was
just the symbol (the armband) that suggested our point of view,”
he said.
In the days — and years — that followed, there were meanspirited attacks. In one phone call to the house, a woman said,
“I’m going to kill you!”
“It was crazy,” Mary Beth said at the tour kickoff. “Our protest
was about peace.” There was hate mail. One note suggesting
that the Tinkers “Go back to Russia.”
“What?” she said. “We lived in Des Moines! We were very
unpopular, but it’s how history is made — with small actions,
but now those actions have defined my life.”
FALL 2013
PAGE 9A
Coming full circle
By J.F. Pirro
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