Florida Student Suspended for Telling Muslim Student To Stand For The Pledge of Allegiance

Heather Lawrence, 16, was suspended from Springstead High School after telling a Muslim student to stand up during the Pledge of Allegiance.

Flap over flag, hijab leads to suspension of Hernando student
By Tony Marrero,
St. Petersburg Times Staff Writer
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Spring Hill
Heather Lawrence didn’t know the name of the girl with the Muslim head covering, or where she was from.
But as Lawrence walked by a classroom at Springstead High School on Wednesday, the 16-year-old junior did know one thing: The girl wasn’t standing for the Pledge of Allegiance.
Lawrence, an JROTC member who plans to enlist in the Army next summer, says she was aghast.

“That’s one of the most disrespectful things you can do,” Lawrence recalled Friday. “Even the kids who are anarchists, who hate our government, still have respect to stand.”

A few bells later, Lawrence was on her way to English class when she saw the girl wearing a hijab in the hallway. Lawrence confronted her.

She told her she should stand for the pledge. And, according to Lawrence’s own account and a school referral on the incident, said, “Take that thing off your head and act like you’re proud to be an American.”

A teacher overheard the encounter. Now Lawrence is serving a five-day, out-of-school suspension, and her parents are considering legal action.

“You have someone in the States who is able to enjoy our educational and health care systems, yet it’s okay for them to be disrespectful, and it’s not okay for my daughter to speak her mind,” said Mark Lawrence, Heather’s father. “That’s her First Amendment right. That’s her freedom of speech.”

Springstead principal Susan Duval said school officials stand behind the punishment. Heather Lawrence violated the district’s policy against bullying and harassment, Duval said. She was disciplined not for telling the girl to stand, but for her other comments — comments that Duval called atrocious.

“It makes me ill,” she said. “That is not what this school is about. These students should feel safe and secure here. We may have differences of opinion, but no student should have to tolerate harassment.”

After the incident, Lawrence was asked by a school staffer why she confronted the girl. “She began to rant that she was enlisting and was going to Iraq and that basically because the girl looks Middle Eastern, that makes her an enemy because all Iraqis are Middle Eastern,” according to the referral signed by assistant principal Stephen Crognale.
Lawrence denies she said that or feels that way.

“Terrorists, regardless of who they are, what color they are, are the enemy,” she said.

School officials would not disclose the identity of the girl. Duval said she wasn’t sure if the girl is new to Springstead or why she didn’t stand for the pledge.
Lawrence said the girl did not respond to her and simply walked away. Duval said the girl did not complain to school officials. Efforts by the St. Petersburg Times to find and reach her were unsuccessful Friday.
As she served her first day of suspension, Lawrence admitted Friday that telling the girl to take off her hijab was “a little over the edge.” Her father agreed she shouldn’t have said it.
“It wasn’t meant to be a racial comment, and I wasn’t trying to bash her religion,” she said. “I didn’t expect her to say (the pledge). I just expect her to stand up for it. If she had a problem with what I said, I’d be happy to apologize to her.”
Mark Lawrence says the district needs to be taken to task for putting words into his daughter’s mouth. He hopes to reverse the suspension and says he’s talked to a lawyer friend of the family.
“I didn’t raise my daughters to be prejudiced,” he said, adding that the family dines often with friends of Iranian descent.
Heather Lawrence has her own unpleasant pledge memory.
She spent six months in Mexico while her father worked a contracting job and was booted out of a private school for not saying the pledge to the Mexican flag. But that was in Spanish — a language she doesn’t know — and so she stopped trying to fake it. And, she says, she still stood up.
Flaps over flag pledging have set legal precedent. A 17-year-old junior at Boynton Beach High School refused to stand for the pledge and was removed from class, prompting a lawsuit and a ruling last year by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court struck down a provision of Florida law requiring civilians to stand for the pledge.
Ramzy Kiliç, executive director of the Tampa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he was concerned by Heather Lawrence’s apparent cultural insensitivity.
But he also said he was surprised to hear that a Muslim would not stand for the pledge. There is no tenet in the religion that encourages Muslims not to do so. “That’s her right,” Kiliç said. “I myself believe she should have stood.”
The hijab clearly made the girl a target, said Dr. Adel Eldin, a Brooksville cardiologist who practices in Spring Hill.
Eldin, who has been busy in August celebrating the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, said he hopes school officials will seize the incident as a teachable moment about his faith.

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Mark Lawrence thinks it’s “absolutely ridiculous” that his daughter Heather has been suspended after telling another student wearing a Muslim head covering to “Take that thing off your head and act like you’re proud to be an American” for refusing to stand or recite the Pledge of Allegiance in class.

Suspended ROTC student feels wronged
written by TONY HOLT
wholt@hernandotoday.com
Hernando Today
Springstead junior thinks five-day suspension wasn’t warranted for telling Muslim student to ‘take that thing off your head.’
Heather Lawrence loves being in JROTC, loves her Marine Corps dad and loves her country.
On Wednesday, anger was the prevailing feeling in her heart when she noticed a student in another classroom had refused to stand during the Pledge of Allegiance. She also refused to recite it.
Heather, a junior at Springstead High School, glanced at the other students in the room, all of whom appeared uncomfortable, she said.
She saw her later in the day between class periods and told her, “Take that thing off your head and act like you’re proud to be an American.”
The student, whom Lawrence could not identify, was wearing a hijab, a head scarf or garment traditionally worn by Muslim women.
A teacher overheard Heather’s statement and told two other teachers. The incident made its way to Assistant Principal Steve Crognale, who called the 16-year-old into his office Friday morning, she said.
He made her wait outside while he called her father, Mark Lawrence.
Crognale told him the school was going to suspend his daughter for five days.

“I said, ‘That is absolutely ridiculous,’” recalled Lawrence, who would not repeat the expletives used during the phone conversation. “I thought it was very unfair.”

He asked Crognale to explain his justification for suspending his daughter.

“He said it was based on the grounds that she made a threat,” said Lawrence, who threw up his arms and shook his head.

He sat in his living room across from his daughter, who was dressed in her U.S. Army-issued uniform. She plans to attend basic training in the summer, return to Springstead for her senior year and pursue a career in the military.
Crognale, who did not return a message seeking comment, claimed the school’s written policy allowed him to suspend her for up to 10 days if he so chose, Lawrence said.
When Heather’s irate father pressed on and asked him to explain how her statement could be interpreted as a threat, Crognale “backed off” and said his daughter’s statement “caused mental duress” for the student, he said.
He conceded his daughter should have refrained from telling her to remove her hijab. Heather was less emphatic.

“I wish I didn’t say, ‘Take that thing off your head,’” she said. “Or maybe I shouldn’t have said it loud enough for the teacher to hear it.”

Her father, a former U.S. Marine, said he and his family have friends who are Iranian and African-American. It is a household that has sworn off racism of any kind, he said.
The original punishment issued by Crognale was five days. Mark Lawrence was under the impression Friday morning he had talked him down to three days. He returned to the school at 12:30 p.m. to pick up the paperwork and was told the original punishment still stood.
Heather Lawrence would have to remain at home for five school days because neither she nor her father would sign the agreement form. They refused to do so out of protest, they said. No threat was made. They insisted the school violated her First Amendment rights.
Lawrence has been suspended at least twice prior to Friday.

She was in the bathroom while another student smoked a cigarette a few feet away. A teacher searched her, found no contraband, but the school still suspended her, she said.

The second time occurred last year, when she missed some classes because of her JROTC commitments. She said she got permission from all of her teachers to miss class that day.

One of her teachers asked a student to go look for her. When she was not found, she reported her as an unexcused absence. She was suspended again.

“At Springstead, the answer to everything is to kick you out of school,” Heather said

A call to Principal Susan Duvall was not returned Friday.
The SCHOOL
It is the second time in less than three months that Springstead has been involved in a First Amendment controversy. School administrators made last year’s valedictorian rewrite her graduation speech because they felt it painted the school in a negative light.
The student agreed to rewrite it, but argued the school was being unreasonable and claimed at least one administrator threatened her. The story received national attention.
Heather’s suspension means she might miss up to 18 weeks of JROTC activities, including a military ball and some program-sponsored community service.

“That really stinks because it is the only thing I do in school,” she said.

She said her friends, relatives, fellow JROTC students and even a few school staffers were “absolutely livid” she was suspended over her comments.

“I’m not one to be a racist,” Heather said.

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Wild Thing’s comment…….
My gut screams that this school does NOT like the ROTC, our military or our troops. Just what I think since they keep going after this student for such flimsy things and she stands out with her Dad being a Marine and her being in JROTC.
The school officials are the ones who should be bounced along with the smug muslim girl who won’t even stand up for the Pledge Of Allegiance.
Oh effing carp…’teachable moment”….here we go again…this PC stuff is going to get us killed!.
‘teachable moment’ = re-education
9/11 was a teachable moment about his faith, so was the USS Cole and the Iranian hostage crisis. Those were enough for me.
Muslims are forcing us to play Cowboys & Muslims.
THERE IS A VIDEO OF THIS at the local ABC news website