Itawamba Student Sues District Over Rap | Jackson Free Press | Jackson, MS

Itawamba Student Sues District Over Rap

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Taylor Bell is suing his high school over free-speech violations a year after another controversy at the school drew attention.

A year ago, the Itawamba County School District made national news for electing to cancel Itawamba Agricultural High School's prom rather than allow lesbian student Constance McMillen to bring her girlfriend as her date. A federal judge ultimately ruled that the district had violated McMillen's First Amendment rights. Now, the district faces another lawsuit alleging that it denied a student's constitutional rights.

Taylor Bell is an 18-year-old senior at the same school that Constance McMillen attended. Until Jan. 7, his only serious disciplinary problem had been a one-day, in-school suspension for being tardy to class. After graduation, Bell plans to attend Itawamba Community College. He's also an aspiring rap musician who has been writing, performing and recording songs since he was 13, using the stage name "T-Bizzle."

Around Christmas of last year, Bell heard some female students at IAHS allege that two male coaches at the school were flirting and touching them inappropriately.

"Girls were saying, 'The coach is looking down my shirt,' or, 'He's saying that my butt is big,' " Bell said. "One girl, a gay girl, (said that one coach) was like, 'If you wasn't so gay, I would turn you out.' Stuff like that you just don't say to students--really, individuals period, but especially not to students."

The next day, Bell said, he had scheduled studio time. In 20 minutes, he wrote three verses about the allegations and recorded them. On Jan. 3, he posted the song on his Facebook page. He says he never asked other students to listen to the song, never accessed it from school and used no school equipment to record it.

Administrators at IAHS got word of the song anyway, and on Jan. 7, they pulled Bell out of class to question him about lyrics that they considered threatening. They honed in on one section, in which Bell rapped, "Looking down girls' shirts / drool running down your mouth / messing with the wrong one / going to get a pistol down your mouth."

Bell says the lyrics were meant to warn the coaches that their alleged behavior could incite a reprisal from the girls' relatives.

"What I was saying was, 'You keep messing with the wrong person's child, you never know who's going to come after you,'" Bell said. "I didn't say that I, personally, was going to do that; I don't have any reason to. I've never harmed anybody. I don't shoot people."

Nevertheless, school officials suspended Bell until a disciplinary hearing. At the Jan. 26 hearing, school-board members decided that "the issue of whether or not lyrics published by Taylor Bell constituted threats to school district teachers was vague," according to a letter from School Board Attorney Michele Floyd to Bell's mother, Dora Bell. "[H]owever, they determined that the publication of those lyrics did constitute harassment and intimidation of two school district teachers, which is a violation of School Board Policy and state law."

Bell gave Floyd two written letters from students confirming the allegations that he mentioned, but the board did not discuss them further. The board then voted to suspend Bell for the remainder of the nine-week quarter.

The Itawamba senior has spent two weeks at the county's alternative school, which he says is inadequate compared to IAHS.

On Feb. 24, Bell filed a lawsuit against the school district, Superintendent Teresa McNeece and IAHS Principal Trae Wiygul, alleging violations of his constitutional right to free speech. The suit asks for Bell's reinstatement at IAHS, expungement of his record and $1.

"It's more a question of principle for him than it is the consequences," Bell's attorney, Wil Colom, said.

McNeece did not return a call for comment, and Floyd declined to comment, citing district policy. "We do not discuss pending litigation, especially when it's involving a student," Floyd said.

In a March 2 filing, Colom argued that there is little precedent allowing schools to restrict students' threatening speech.

"While the government can proscribe a true threat of violence without offending the First Amendment, it may only do so when the threat is intentional, direct and serious," Colom wrote. "Taylor never took actions to ensure the song was heard by the coaches, and a song with hyperbolic and symbolic lyrics cannot be viewed as serious when the student did not convey the threats to anyone with a relationship to the alleged victims."

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