News & Commentary

As I write this blog, I’m gazing across the Saint John River onto the beautiful snowy slopes of the Canadian countryside. My location is Madawaska, a picturesque little community that proudly calls itself “the most northeastern town in the United States.” While one could certainly justify taking a vacation here, that is not my purpose. I’m here on an educational mission, and my objective is clear: teach tomorrow’s leaders about the Bill of Rights.

Each Friday, we’ll bring you updates on the latest civil liberties news from Maine and the nation.

Last year our education program reached 41 different schools from all 16 counties. We did this through a combination of three student conferences in the fall and more than 20 classroom visits during the spring semester. This year we’re hoping to increase that number even more, and with most high schools a week away from midterms we’ve been busy getting ready to hit the road as soon as the spring semester begins.

For a number of years, the ACLU has worked to raise awareness of the "school to prison pipeline"--a product of over-policing of public schools, zero-tolerance policies directed at young people, and harsh punishments. The cumulative effect of these policies is a situation where many students--particularly in poorer areas of the country--travelled a seamless path from high school to the criminal justice system. Four years ago, the ACLU published a report on the problems created by the largely unregulated, unsupervised work of school resource officers. The report set out a number of suggestions designed to guide the work of these police officers who are stationed at schools and who take part in school discipline. Fighting against the "school to prison pipeline" has been one of the highest priorities of the ACLU, both at the national level and in the affiliates. Students have rights, and we all have an interest is keeping young people out of the criminal justice system.

Consider for a moment how much you share about yourself over email, Facebook, Twitter, private blogs and the like. Many of us use these platforms to communicate far more than phones and snail-mail. Now imagine you are applying for a job, and your potential employer tells you that during application process they will be listening in on all your phone calls, reading your emails, and poking around your Facebook account - so please turn over your passwords. Only one of those things is illegal.

The front page of today’s New York Times featured an excellent article titled “Seeing the Toll, Schools Revise Zero Tolerance.” It spoke to a growing movement by school administrators in big cities to reconsider "zero-tolerance" policies and other "tough on crime" approaches in light of the effects that they are having on today's young people.

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend part of a week-long symposium organized by Maine Inside Out – a non-profit organization that collaborates with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people to create and share original theater. The symposium was titled Culture of Punishment – From Parenting to Prisons and culminated with keynote address by prominent anti-death penalty activist and author of Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean.

Today was our first student conference of the year – and it was our largest ever! With 242 students attending from 13 different schools, it was a packed house of eager youngsters ready to listen, discuss and debate on the great constitutional issues of their day.

In just two weeks we’ll host our first Bill of Rights Student Conference of the 2013-14 school year. We’ve got more than a dozen schools coming to our conference in Portland, and nearly a dozen more for the Farmington and Belfast conferences in the subsequent weeks. We’ll be covering lots of different topics at our conferences – from free speech to equal protection to police stops – but perhaps the freshest topic of them all will be bullying.