Fox News Banned From High School A Must Read

[Alexander Freeborn]

Folks You Just Can't Make This Up. At the bottom is the address to the Michigan State Attorney, everyone here needs to send a letter of complaint and demand a criminal charge of Constitutional Violation of the First Amendment.

Student Says Teacher Scolded Him for Viewing FOXNews.com
Friday, May 01, 2009
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,518636,00.html

A Michigan high school is investigating allegations that one of its teachers berated and belittled a student for taking part in what the teacher considered an unacceptable activity: reading FOXNews.com.

A young man who identified himself only as Mitchell, an 18-year-old senior at Traverse City West Senior High School, called in to Rush Limbaugh's radio show Thursday and said he was yelled at in front of his classmates for reading the "wrong" news.

The teacher of his video production class saw what he was looking at and "proceeded to give me a 10-minute lecture on why I can't read FOX News ... and that I can only listen to BBC and other news venues," the student said.

James Feil, superintendent of Traverse City Area Public Schools, told FOXNews.com that any attempts to pressure students politically would go against his schools' policies.

"It would be inappropriate. I would clearly tell you that is not something that we would do anything to indoctrinate students here," he said. "That would clearly be a violation of our policies and guidelines, written or non-written."

Traverse City West principal Joe Tibaldi declined to comment about the inquiry he was leading, but school officials said the student hadn't violated any computer-use rules in his class.

But the school has a strict policy against bullying, which it says "may in circumstances be a violation of federal or state law" and goes against its commitment to provide a safe learning environment.

"Bullying, taunting, stalking, hazing and other forms of harassment ... by any member of the staff are strictly forbidden," according to the school handbook. "Any student or staff member found to have bullied, taunted, stalked, hazed or harassed another person in any form will be subject to discipline."

Traverse City West has several art and science teachers, but it was unclear who leads the video production class. The superintendent wouldn't confirm the involvement of any specific teacher.

Feil said the student never filed a complaint to the school and Tibaldi was following up "in a very responsible and a timely manner."

Read the transcript from RushLimbaugh.com.

RUSH: Mitchell, 18 years old, Traverse City, Michigan. Hello, and welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, how are you doing?

RUSH: Good.

CALLER: I was just calling to talk to you. I'm a senior in high school and today I was on the Internet reading Fox News, and my teacher came up behind me and found out I was reading Fox News and yelled at me in front of the whole class and said I was not allowed to read Fox News in class, that I'm only allowed to read BBC and stuff of that nature.

RUSH: Wait a second. I want to get a picture here. You've got your computer on in class. You're legally allowed to have the computer on in class?

CALLER: Yes. There's a whole bunch of computers in the classroom. It's a computer classroom and I'm sitting there, and he comes up behind me and I'm reading Fox News.

RUSH: What is the class? Is it computer science? What is the class?

CALLER: It's a video production class, and I'm already done with the video I was producing, so...

RUSH: So you're reading Fox News, the teacher comes up and spots that, says, "You can't read that!" in front of the whole class?

CALLER: In front of the whole class. And then he proceeded to give me a ten-minute lecture on why I can't read Fox News.

RUSH: Summarize it in 30 seconds.

CALLER: Something like they actually know that they have, you know, conservative views they're trying to push on me and all these different things that there are speaking points that they tell their reporters to report on to get me to believe certain ways and that I can only listen to BBC and other news venues.

RUSH: Did your teacher say anything about me?

CALLER: No, but I pulled up the Rush Limbaugh page directly after that, just to tick him off some more, but he walked away because he was so mad at me before I could show him.

RUSH: Well, you must try. That's great. Now, this is fabulous. That's guts! That's courage! Tell him he can't listen to Fox, pulls up my website. Do it again with the teacher behind you. Be defiant there. Because we lie. We lie. We're "spreading propaganda." It's scary. It is really scary to find out just how ignorant and stupid so many American teachers in this country are. They're just activists. They're nothing more than activists. They're not teachers at all.

Michigan Department of Attorney General
G. Mennen Williams Building, 7th Floor
525 W. Ottawa St.
P.O. Box 30212
Lansing, MI 48909