Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

To: brad.neavin@sugarcreek.k12.oh.us
Subject: Tinker v. Des Moines
CC: chuck.birkholtz@sugarcreek.k12.oh.us, amy.baldridge@sugarcreek.k12.oh.us, 7online@whiotv.com

From your recent behavior, I assume you have little to no understanding of civil rights or the principles America was founded on. In Tinker v. Des Moines, the Supreme Court held up the right of students to protest the Vietnam war (during class). Let's not lie here -- this isn't about a legitimate threat to the President. This was about you attempting to squash legal political protest. A commercially available and legal t-shirt worn by a teen is no threat to the President, and we all know that.

As was written in Tinker v. Des Moines (393 US 503 if you'd like to look it up), "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

The end result of punishing students for political dissension in the way you and the Secret Service did sends a very disturbing message: We are literally being told that "being politically opposed to the president" is the same as being "a danger to the presidency". The logical conclusion to this path of thinking is that voting against the President is akin to treason. Is this what American schools have come to?

Thanks a lot for doing your small part in raising taxes (do you realize how much taxpayer money is wasted by needless investigations like this?), and congratulations on making your small mark on history -- you will now forever be remembered as one of the many unamerican traitors that helped destroy what was once a great country.

For shame.

Shannon Larratt

"That erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else."
   -- H L. Mencken