”...It’s a wonder I can think at all…” (Paul Simon, Kodachrome)

These lyrics played in my mind as I read the news about two Bay Area students being questioned by the Secret Service. It’s a strange country that sends its young people to school to learn about the rights they have under our Constitution (and under Miranda v. Arizona), but then tells those same students that they have no rights at all: Secret Service Questions Students (link from this entry at MetaFilter)

Apparently there was a classroom discussion about the war in Iraq in which two students expressed the opinion that we would all be better off if someone assassinated the president (or something to that effect, I don’t know the exact details). As I’m sure you all know, the Secret Service takes all such threats seriously and so it arrested these two students when it was called in to investigate this situation.

Perhaps this article is more meaningful for me because I spent part of my high school years in the Bay Area (I even took my SATs at Oakland High, the school in question in this article), but I thought this article was noteworthy because in my youth I think I might have made similar comments in a such a classroom discussion. There but for the grace of God (and the decade that has passed since I was in high school) go I. It struck me as very chilling. As one of the teachers involved noted, those students will probably never express an opinion about anything ever again.

What bothers me about the way this situation was handled (aside from the fact that the Secret Service was notified at all—frankly, I think the teacher should have pointed out that such comments are inappropriate and illegal, rather than immediately calling in the goon squad) is that the students’ parents were not notified prior to the interrogation—and when the students inquired about their rights, they were told: “we own you, you don’t have any legal rights”.

The whole issue strikes me as a tempest in a teapot, but some wingnut would probably say that the tragedy at Columbine “shows that the threat from students should not be underestimated” or something similar. What I think this shows is that kids should be careful to phrase such wishful thinking in a manner that makes it clear that they have no intention of being the agent of death. Something along the lines of “We should all chip in for a big bag of pretzels for Bush” or “Gee, wouldn’t it be great if Cheney had fatal heart attack” or “All our problems would be solved if Karl Rove got hit by a bus” would not be as likely to attract unwelcome attention from the Secret Service.

Do any of those expressions suggest much maturity? Not really, but we’re talking about high school kids, not adults—which is why they should be protected from their own foolishness until they grow up. We should worry more that their rights were violated than we should about their (presumably offhanded) statements in class.