The Bentonville School Board has already made it clear that student protests against gun violence today will be met with the harshest discipline allowed under district guidelines. It’s just politics, a 4-3 majority declared, to show solidarity with children massacred in Florida classrooms.

That was bad. This is worse.

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KNWA reports that a student, Summerlin Hutson, was suspended for two days for distributing flyers about a planned Bentonville walkout. Her dad spoke up for her. She apparently ran afoul of a district rule requiring two-day-advance approval for distribution of flyers.

Really?

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Pre-approval for 1st Amendment speech and petition?

Would you be suspended in Bentonville for distributing copies of the U.S. Constitution without two-day prior approval?

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Rules are rules, dammit. Unless, if I may be allowed to repeat myself, you are a veteran Bentonville employee who steals from district money for personal use. Or unless it’s a rule about the required number of certified boiler operators. In those cases, wiggle room is allowed in Bentonville.

I hope Bentonville sees a 2,000-student walkout and then must hold a football stadium mass D-hall for these anarchist rule breakers. Maybe one of them will write a Letter from the Bentonville Jail. At a mimimum, they can lock arms and come up with some new verses of “We Shall Overcome.”

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Your sons and daughters are beyond your command, Bentonville bullies.

Note support for authoritarianism from an unsurprising state Senate source. I commended him with  the image of character from film whom Hester recalls. “Thank you sir. May I have another?”

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