Indiana law may violate students rights

By Editorial Board

Publication Date: 05/20/2009

With all the increasing protections for teachers in a new Indiana education law, there is even more potential for students’ rights to be infringed upon.

The law guarantees teachers qualified immunity from suits related to “reasonable” disciplinary action, expands the authority of teachers to remove problem students from their classrooms, and makes the process for a student’s return to a classroom more involved. It also provides means to notify teachers of their rights. The primary problems lie in those first three things listed.

Take, for example, a high school student who vocally contradicts a teacher during an in-class debate. The teacher decides to remove the student from their classroom, citing disruptive behavior. How does a court deal with a he-said, she-said situation pitting a student against a teacher? The potential for abuse of power is all too present.

This, together with a more rigorous – i.e. more time-consuming – process for returning students to the classroom, could easily give rise to problems and hinder a student’s academic career. Coupled with the new provision for qualified immunity from prosecution for teachers, it has the potential for serious abuse of power on the parts of some teachers.

Students’ rights are already severely abridged, compared to every other citizen in the United States. Numerous court decisions restrict their free speech and freedom from illegal search; in other cases in which those rights have been upheld, students were originally suspended or expelled for exercising them. Officials nearly always excused their actions by saying that student expression disrupted the learning environment.

As associates of a university, most of us have been out of high school for a while. It’s easy to forget the feelings of powerlessness and desire for expression. But it’s important to remember that students are entitled to some rights under the law, and they are also entitled to air their grievances before a court if they feel they have been mistreated. The language of the law must be cleared up to protect their right to attend school and give students, and parents, some way to appeal disciplinary actions.