Honor society didn't violate 1st Amendment

The First Amendment, usually running patiently in the background of America's operating system but never distant from our thoughts, lately has been thrust to center stage.

The result of all this sudden attention has been sobering. Substantial portions of your neighbors have demonstrated an alarming disconnect between the actual plain wording of the First Amendment - "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" - and its practical application to life in these United States.

Your neighbors recoiled a couple of weeks ago when the Supreme Court nullified McCain-Feingold's nutty restriction on when and whether corporations, labor unions and nonprofit groups could fund issue advertisements or other political speech (but kept in place prohibitions against direct contributions to candidates, or foreign participation).

Now, risking whiplash, your neighbors have condemned as a free-speech violation the expulsion of Alex Fuentes, an 18-year-old high school senior from a private organization whose rules, a panel of six teachers - half of whom were Fuentes' classroom instructors - unanimously concluded he violated.

Your neighbors' sympathies are understandable. It seems like the big guys glommed onto more power and, almost in the next instant, a single opinionated little guy got smacked. This was what Mr. Madison had in mind? Really?

You heard of my school?

Alas, whatever its other qualities, sympathy is not an argument. Peel away the first-glance veneer and the answer would seem to be: Yes. This is almost certainly what Madison and Associates had in mind.

"Congress shall make no law" seems clear enough. Congress made a law. Out it goes.

As for Fuentes, he had been inducted into the National Honor Society at Wesley Chapel High; wisely or otherwise, the school's honor society chapter requires members to take a pledge of loyalty - call it the Beach Boys Vow: "Be True to Your School" - to the chartered institution.

That Fuentes strayed is indisputable. He created a Facebook page with a denigrating title ("Wesley Chapel High = Fail"), either because he was "frustrated" with the school's low grade as measured by FCAT tests, or because he was playing "a joke that was taken the wrong way."

The site soon drew a dedicated following from other Wesley Chapel High students who, abetted by Fuentes' frustration/prank merrily piled on (oftentimes profanely). Before it devolved into an orgy of backslapping for young Alex, the site may have been any number of things. Needed, provocative, edgy, instructive, sassy, dumb.

But you needn't have scored an 800 on the verbal portion of the SAT to understand how the creation, facilitation and promotion of a forum that produced such witticisms as this - "Damn school made me want to throw up every day I was there" - could be construed to be something other than loyal.

He accepted the pledge

Maybe NHS at WCHS shouldn't require a loyalty pledge (not all chapters do), or perhaps the loyalty pledge should be more explicit about what it covers. But Fuentes came aboard when the rules were what they were.

If he considered them to be vague - not among his claims, incidentally - he could have sought counsel from the faculty sponsor. If he considered them outrageous, he could have resigned. He did neither.

Listen, private associations get to set their membership dictates, and those dictates may range from generous to bizarre. Don't join the Society of Green Socks Wearers if you like to mix in khakis or argyles.

It's up to individuals to weigh whether enrollment is worth the compromises, up to and including sacrificing a portion of your right to speak, broadcast or publish freely.

Here's the good news about the First Amendment: Nobody's stopping Alex Fuentes now.