Student’s Art Project Deemed ‘Harassment’ of School Officials

The petty totalitarianism of public education strikes again.
Lucero Tovar, a 14-year-old girl who attends high school in Santa
Maria Independent Schools in Texas, was accused of harassing
administrators and threatened with a four day suspension.

What did Tovar actually do? Nothing of the sort.

Tovar was given an assignment for her criminal
justice class that required her to create a mini-courtroom. She
took the art project a step further, using pictures of school
officials, her family, and even celebrities to pack the courtroom.
She glued real people’s faces onto the bodies of the prosecutor,
judge, jury, etc.

That seems harmless enough, but the school’s principal said it
amounted to harassment, according to
valleycentral.com:

“The principal just looks at me and is like ‘you know why you’re
in here right?’” she explained.  “I said no.  She said
‘you’re harassing people.’  And I was like ‘huh?’  For
me, I was like ‘what?’”

Her school project, which she said portrayed a completely fake
courtroom setting, was apparently damaging to the reputations of
district personnel as detailed in a school notice of a
suspension.

Action 4 News obtained copies of the school notices from
Tovar.

“She just told me that I was harassing and that she’s going to
suspend me for 4 days,” Tovar said.

Local reporter Ryan Wolf took up Tovar’s case. He eventually
spoke with the district superintendent, who noted that Tovar’s
punishment was ultimately just a 1-day suspension.

She will never serve it; Tovar’s parents decided to enroll her
in a different school.

Hopefully, the kid learned a valuable lesson about criminal
justice: Don’t make fun of entrenched bureaucrats, even in
unintentional and inoffensive ways, lest they crush you with their
evil powers.