Secret Service questions student about anti-war drawings By Associated Press

U.S. Secret Service agents questioned a high school student here about anti-war drawings he turned in to his art teacher, one of which depicted President Bush’s head on a stick.

Another pencil-and-ink drawing depicted Bush as a devil launching a missile, with a caption reading ”End the war — on terrorism.”

The 15-year-old boy’s art teacher turned the drawings over to school administrators, who notified a police officer assigned to work with the Prosser High School campus.

”We involve the police anytime we have a concern,” Prosser Superintendent Ray Tolcacher told the Tri-City Herald newspaper. ”From our perspective it was an incident that needed to be reported to the police on campus.”

Secret Service agents interviewed the boy last Friday. The student, who was not arrested, has not been identified.

The school district disciplined him, but district officials refused to say what the punishment was. Tolcacher said the boy was not suspended.

Tolcacher insisted it was not a freedom of speech issue, but a concern over the depiction of violence. …

”If this 15-year-old kid in Prosser is perceived as a threat to the president, then we are living in ‘1984’,” Cravens said.

I think the important fact of this story is that a teacher betrayed a student and turned that student over to the government. So much for fostering independent thought and reasoning.

High school students should know they have no rights and no freedom. In this zero tolerance age, all search and seizure is ‘reasonable.’ No doubt this will make for very pliant, docile citizens in the future. mjh