High School student punished for taking "under God" from pledge

MARTHA MODEEN; The News Tribune

A Spanaway Lake High School senior has been banned from TV production assignments for the rest of the year because he altered the Pledge of Allegiance during a student-produced broadcast.

The student, Kenny Hess, removed the words "under God" from the pledge, which is shown with an American flag background on classroom TV throughout the school. Hess also declined to recite the phrase and, instead read, "one nation ... indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."


School officials said they've punished Hess for misusing school equipment to deliver a personal message.

<snip>

Every day, students at Spanaway Lake and other schools across the state begin their day by reciting the pledge, as required by state law.


Hess, an avowed atheist since sixth grade, thinks he's forced to listen to a religious statement when he hears the pledge. Last week, his world current events class debated Newdow's case. After one student said, "Christians are forcing us to listen to this," Hess vowed that he could make students not listen to the words. The phrase "under God" was added to the pledge by congressional vote in 1954, during the Cold War.


"I took it out to prove we don't have to hear it," Hess said.

<snip>

Hess, 18, plans a career in broadcasting and wants to finish his assignments.


"I want my privileges back," he said. "It's not right to take them away."

<snip>

Hess has drawn sympathy from the Humanists of Washington, whose membership is composed largely of atheists.


"Good grief, this is severe," said Barbara Dority, HOW president. "This could have been used as a learning experience. It's too bad that the adults in this situation reacted as they did."


Hess on Thursday sat in class but refused to read books until his punishment is reconsidered by school officials.


"I told them I wasn't going to read anything until I talk to the principal," he said.



http://www.tribnet.com/news/story/4913718p-4848428c.html

Martha Modeen: 253-597-8646
martha.modeen@mail.tribnet.com

I thought the law said it was optional in the first place!

"School officials said they've punished Hess for misusing school equipment to deliver a personal message."
That makes sense. There are other ways to make a statment. I'd be mad if it were the other way around.

not deliver a supposedly-optional message. This undermines any school-official claim that 'under God' is optional in the Pledge.

And isn't there case-law on student rights to free expression in school-based publications? Would it not apply to school-based electronic media.

If any discipline is required at all,
the discipline administered here is wholly inappropriate.
This student is in his senior year and preparing to go into broadcasting. His education is being stifled by the scholl administration.

Omission of two little words is "misusing school equipment"? Shrub uttered a 16 word lie and no one accused him of misusing government equipment to deliver a personal message.

kids are told in school every day in a hundred different
ways that you must be religious to be patriotic.