letters.

Witch Hunt?

I think Brandi Blackbear is a witch ("The Tulsa Witch Trial," 2/19/01), but as the First Amendment says, you have the right to any religion you want. If she's not, then it's even more unfair that she got suspended and called a witch. Unfortunately, I have a similar problem at my school. I read books on witchcraft, and one kid saw them in my backpack when my backpack split. Fortunately, the kid didn't tell a teacher or anybody like that, but the whole grade knows. My advice to Brandi is not to bring the books to school.

NAME WITHHELD BY REQUEST Boston, Mass.

Witches do exist, but they are not the green-faced, malicious lunatics that fairy tales show them as. Witchcraft, or Wicca, is an earth-honoring faith whose main rule is "harm none."

MITRA EGHBAL Bensalem, Pa.

Even if you were to break the rule of inflicting no harm, which would most likely have you banished from your coven, the threefold law would come into effect: Whatever casters send out will come back to them three times stronger. If Brandi Blackbear had put a hex on her teacher, she herself would have fallen ill, more so than her teacher. To Brandi I would like to say: Good luck with your case --and keep writing.

JACOB MARSHALL LEMAIRE Brownwood, Tex.

School officials had no right to suspend her.

FRED SHAFFER Tunkhannock, Pa.

Teens have a lack of respect these days. Even if the hex Brandi supposedly cast on her teacher is not real, she got suspended for a good reason.

MARTIN RINI Vermilion, Ohio 

Free Speech in School

In "What Are Your Rights?" (2/19/01), you state, "when it comes to writing for the school newspaper, the Supreme Court ruled in 1988, in a case called Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, that the school has the final say on what may see the light of day." This is not true.

The Hazelwood decision makes a distinction between "free-forum" and "school-sponsored" publications. To be a free forum, a paper must have a policy or practice of letting student editors make the final decisions. In such papers, speech is protected by the Tinker v. Des Moines decision of 1969, which ruled that students do not lose their First Amendment rights simply because they set foot on school grounds. Speech can be censored only if administrators can prove it would disrupt school, or if it is libelous, obscene, or falls into a similar category.

Even if a paper is not a free forum, school administrators must prove that censorship is "reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns"--that is, that it has to do with education. The problem is that the wording of that stipulation is extremely ambiguous.

Also, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, and Massachusetts state laws usually afford students more protection than is usually granted under Hazelwood.

The Student Press Law Center (http://splc.org), the Committee to Protect Journalists (www.cpj.org), and the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press (www.rcfp.org/rcfp) offer more information on the subject.

CATHERINE VERMEERSCH Hamilton, Ohio 

No Seeing-Eye Chickens

I can only say to the Asians who eat roasted dogs ("Not Dogs," News and Trends, 2/19/01) that I have never seen a pig, cow, lamb, or chicken save a life, aid the handicapped, or lead the blind.

DIANA KRUG Troy, Pa.

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