I am no legal eagle, so my analysis of the first day of testimony at the Avery Doninger trial may be a little off base. As I understand things, a key defense that a student’s freedom of speech has not been violated is if the student’s speech was ‘disruptive’.

The defense lawyer grilled the students testifying about whether or not the students knew if the administration had been disrupted by receiving all the phone calls that they had been receiving. He seemed to be suggesting that it is a disruption for school administrators to receive phone calls from concerned parents and taxpayers.

The defense repeatedly asked students if they thought it was appropriate to for the students to send an email encouraging taxpayers to contact the school. The implication was that he believed it was not. I suspect this gets to a crucial point in the case. The view of the school administration seems to be that they can’t be bothered with what parents and taxpayers think. The implicit message is that the school administration knows best and the parents, students and taxpayers be damned.

The same issue came up with campaigning leading up to the vote. Avery and her supporters had T-shirts saying Team Avery, and something like “Support Freedom of Speech”. The school seems to suggest that this was disruptive as the reason it wasn’t allowed into the room where people were campaigning.

A key argument of the administration is that student leaders serve at the whim of the administration, and they need to act like adults to earn that privilege. Well, excuse me, but I believe that the folks who are acting like adults are the students. When you want to get a policy changed, you get people involved and urge them to contact the policy makers. That is what we adults do. We encourage friends to write to our elected officials. When we run for office, we wear T-shirts and buttons.

At the end of the day, Judge Kravitz addressed both sides talking about how cases like these are the ones that lawyers and judges love as they wind their long way to the Supreme Court. Yet he went on to talk about this from a perspective that is extremely important to me, that of the teaching opportunity. I believe that today was a valuable day for Avery and the students that got a chance to testify today. If this drags on, it can be a wonderful opportunity for students to learn more about the legal process. Yet Judge Kravitz had another suggestion. This could also be an opportunity for students to learn about finding meaningful resolutions other ways than litigation.

I hope that people listen to his remarks. Yet that may require relearning other more important and difficult lessons about humility, being able to admit one’s mistakes. Right now, it appears as if the school administration is more interested in vindictiveness and their lawyers on nitpicking than they are in serving the public interest or helping students learn.