BRISTOL, Vt. — Two students who put up a small statue of Jesus in a high school lobby area have been asked to take it down because it violates school policy.
The Mount Abraham Union High School students and their teacher say a principal’s request violates their right to free speech, but the head of the state’s American Civil Liberties Union says the school may have a point.
“This is the classic example of the clash of rights within the First Amendment regarding religious expression,” said Allen Gilbert, executive director of the ACLU of Vermont.
On May 16, Torin Olivetti and Galen Helms placed the 2-foot-tall statue in a second-floor balcony overlooking the main lobby in what they say was part of a project for their advanced placement English class.
As part of the class, students have to read a play called “The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail,” about “Walden” author Henry David Thoreau’s refusal to pay taxes over what he said was the United States’ immoral war in Mexico.
Helms, 18, of Monkton, says he was trying to highlight the school’s hypocrisy on the issue of separation of church and state because it parallels Thoreau’s feelings about hypocrisy by the U.S. government.
He says the school allows students to say the words “under God” while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and that a mural in the school displays Apollo, a Greek god.
“My thesis was that the government and the administration of our school is often hypocritical in what they allow and what they do not allow,” said Helms, who is not a Christian but said he sees Jesus as someone who taught love, forgiveness and compassion.
“People, when they saw it, some people were praying next to it, which is perfectly legal,” said Olivetti, 17. “Some people were patting it on the head. Most people were smiling when they saw it.”
But some called the statue disrespectful or questioned whether school was the appropriate place for it. After receiving complaints, Principal Paulette Bogan asked them to remove it.
“I asked them what their purpose was, and they said their purpose was to basically make people smile,” Bogan said May 22. “I told them that it needed to be removed from the walkway.”
She says the statue violated a policy that calls for student presentations and displays to exhibit academic work or to educate or inform the community. The statue didn’t, she said.
“The students certainly did not convey that it was a project on religious symbols, anything but,” she said.
Teacher Richard Steggarda, who says the statue wasn’t intended to be derisive, said he planned to contact the ACLU about it.
“I guess what I’m upset about is that we have no rights,” Steggarda said.
But the ACLU’s Gilbert said both sides have legitimate concerns.
“On the one hand, individuals have an individual right of free religious expression. On the other hand, the government — which includes schools — can appear to be endorsing one religion or another. And the problem here, I think, is that to many people, it would appear the school may be endorsing a religion by allowing the statue to be where it is.”