Peace Out

[March 14th, 2007] In the fiercely sarcastic realm of antiwar sentiment—the kind displayed on buttons and billboards and bumper stickers —"peace" is hardly an explosive message.

But after teenagers at Wilson High School used water-soluble paint to scrawl that word in English, Spanish, Latin, Italian and German on windows around the school, an unidentified parent complained.

Portland Public Schools general counsel Jollee Patterson warned Wilson principal Sue Brent that allowing any form of "graffiti" on a government building opens the window to the display of other messages. The content of additional messages would then be out of the Southwest Portland school's control because, in essence, the district would have created a new public forum for free speech.

At that point, Patterson says, the district could not censor what students and teachers chose to display, unless the words or images were considered obscene or hateful.

Bottom line? The painting of "peace" could set the stage for a slippery First Amendment free-for-all. As a result, Patterson advised Brent to wash off the words, which teachers had permitted.

"It's not appropriate to be using windows as a method of communication," Patterson says. "Obviously, we don't have an issue with the message of peace...the point is not against the message."

As of Monday, though, when the "peace" slogans were supposed to have been washed off the windows, they were two weeks old and still there.

English teacher Karl Meiner appreciates the district's legal argument but is displeased anyway.

"I would understand clearly if it was an explicit antiwar message," Meiner says. "But it says 'peace,' and that seems like a value that they would want to encourage regardless of the political climate."

The school's namesake, it's worth noting, is President Woodrow Wilson, who won the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize.

Senior Alisha Beck says the message on the windows represents the sentiment of most students as well as the man for whom the school was named.

"If the statement is something supported by the school, it should stay up," says Beck, 17.

This isn't the first time administrators have cracked down on students' antiwar statements. In January, senior Daniel Ronan had to remove a sign in front of the Wilson gym that said, "U.S. soldiers dead in Iraq = 3,000; Iraqis = unknown; why?" The school let him put the sign up again after he changed it to "U.S. soldiers dead in Iraq = 3,000; Iraqis = 600,000; think about it."

The district's response to the more recent peace signs doesn't wash with Ronan, 17.

"If you go to Stephenson [Elementary]," Ronan says "and see snowflakes in the windows, are you going to tell them to rip them off?"