Bong Hits For Jesus

Today, we talked about the kid who made the sign and held it up before the Olympic parade that read, "Bong Hits For Jesus". Although I agree with the school giving him a suspension for displaying references to drugs (which was a school policy), I am slightly confused at where the supreme court decides where student free speech ends. In a CNN article I read, one of the lawyers added, "...While the court has limited student free speech rights in the past, young people do not give up all their First Amendment rights when they enter a school." I think that this is just one case, but where does free speech really end and begin? This really made me think about what we are truly allowed to say and display at our schools. In freshman year, my advisory was going to make sweatshirts with my advisor, Ms. Hayes, and it was going to say Purple Hayes (like the song). But the idea was turned down by the principle. But if we had made those shirts...what would that lead to? If that kid can't make drug references, can we even joke about it? where is the line, and should it even be drawn?

Puritans using belief for control?

In one of our discussions about puritan life after they left England, I started to question the puritan beliefs in God vs. the Devil and who was going to heaven or hell once they died. After hearing the puritan views on life and, I began to wonder what the intention of all of their rules really was. We talked in class about how a few of the puritans were excommunicated from the village because of their thoughts and ideas, and were sent away to Rhode Island. One of those people was Anne Hutchinson. A few years after she was banished from the town, she was murdered by Indians in the woods. The puritan priest found out and told his people that it was "The lord's doing...and isn't it great?" This statement really made me think, what is the priest trying to tell his people. Was he saying that they should be afraid of the world, and should not speak their mind or else they will suffer a death like she did? I think that is exactly what he was trying to tell them. In the movie The Village, a small town is hidden away in the forest, far away from modern human civilization. The people are told that they can not leave the village, for if they do, they will be killed by monsters. A couple times throughout the movie, we see the monsters come out, but in the end, we find that they are really older towns people dressed up in costumes to scare their people from venturing out of the village. This, I believe, is a parallel between the puritans and the movie, The Village. Just like they dressed up in monster costumes to scare people to not wonder off, the puritans were told that if they leave their village of "God" or are not told they are going to heaven, they will end up going to hell or dying, like Hutchinson did when she was banished to Rhode Island.