The Chicago Tribune recently published an article about an “Oak Lawn high school teacher’s sign on his classroom door saying students who don’t stand for the Pledge of Allegiance are not welcome.” The high school physics teacher was also reported enforcing the rule, telling a student to either stand for the pledge or leave the room.

This is my high school. And I’m not surprised.

Unfortunately, this isn’t uncommon. In two cases I’ve had teachers deny my right to not participate in the pledge, and I once had a teacher take my school ID, which he never returned and that I had to pay for, it being against school rules.

These kinds of instances—instances of high school teachers blatantly infringing upon the rights of their students—shouldn’t happen. The teacher should stop enforcing his sign because he is morally and legally obligated to.

Students may refuse to sit for the pledge of allegiance for many reasons. They might be protesting racial inequalities. They may be a Jehovah’s Witness. They may be non-religious and reject the notion of “one nation, under God,” or they might just be too tired to publicly support their undying patriotism to a flag every morning. All of these reasons (or even none at all) are good enough to not stand for the pledge of allegiance.

So why might someone uphold the teacher’s position? The strongest argument (as weak as it is) claims that we should participate in the pledge because we owe it to those who have risked their lives to give us the freedom to sit in the first place, that it is disrespectful to sit down given all of their sacrifices.

But whether or not we should stand for the pledge has no bearing on whether we should have the freedom to stand.

What is more valuable—a person’s freedom of choice at the cost of someone feeling disrespected or someone feeling respected at the cost of someone’s freedom of speech and religion? To offer an analogy, suppose you were to attend an anti-cop or anti-military rally to protest racial inequalities, but then you remember: people will feel disrespected by me attending this rally. Would you feel wronged if your freedom to attend that rally was restricted? It seems obvious that a person’s interest in freedom here outweighs the interests of anyone else feeling disrespected, others things being equal.

Furthermore, to force a student to participate in the pledge is illegal: it has been since 1943. This issue was contested in the supreme court case West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. The court ruled 6-3 that an individual’s right to freedom of expression made any rule mandating a student’s participation in the pledge of allegiance illegitimate. Information on this can be read at the Free Speech Center for Middle Tennessee State University, a “nonpartisan, nonprofit public policy center.”

Ian Palacios is a junior English and philosophy major. He can be reached at 581-2812 or impalacios.edu.