Quarter 2 Benchmark - Student Rights

Reflection:

We wanted to look into the subject of Freedom of Speech and one of the controversial issues standing is student rights. The actual rights are not written expressly for the youth under the age of 18. Given that they are minors and in a school system that has varying rules special to each school, we wanted to get the opinions of students on what they believe their rights are and how they'd feel if the freedom given was restricted more than it is now.

The most challenging part of this project was getting the interviews and getting questions that would pull out the most intriguing answers. The length of the video was a problem i ran into and he to pull some last minute stops to get it to be an appropriate time.

I wasn't actually aware that student's rights were not a part of the constitution nor an amendment. Even after the first case regarding the rights of a student, Tinker vs. Des Moines, the supreme court ruled in favor of the students however after that many cases have taken separate courses depending on the judge or subject regarding the issue. The first amendment states "

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Keyword being "the people", not age appropriate, or just 18 to 88. It says all persons. But since school's make regulations against certain articles of clothing and practices in their halls it is basically unconstitutional to tell a student he isn't allowed to do or say something but that still butts heads with the authority of the school system so there can't be a law undermining the regulations a school puts into place.

Adding to length and wider range of opinions and subject matters as well as narration from us the creators could make the video better all around.

Finding people who had something to say was relatively easy. Each person has an opinion of how the schools are run and each has a strong reaction to "how would you feel if you couldn't" questions.

Adding better materials. The editing wasn't hard but having something to edit was a problem that we ran into.