Insane: School suspends student for saying ‘illegal alien’

The progressive capture of our education system is getting harder and harder to deny. The latest example of liberalism run amok in America’s schools comes courtesy of North Carolina, where a school reportedly suspended a student for daring to use the term “illegal alien” during a classroom conversation.  

The 16-year-old was in English class during a vocabulary lesson and when the word alien was mentioned asked a clarifying question: “Like space aliens or illegal aliens without green cards?” This innocent question got him suspended for three days.

“According to an email describing the incident, sent to local officials and shared with Carolina Journal, a young man in class took offense to his question and reportedly threatened to fight him, prompting the teacher to call in the assistant principal,” the Carolina Journal’s Brianna Kraemer reported. “Ultimately, his words were deemed by administrative staff to be offensive and disrespectful to classmates who are Hispanic.”

“I wasn’t speaking of Hispanics because everyone from other countries needs green cards, and the term ‘illegal alien’ is an actual term that I hear on the news and can find in the dictionary,” the student told the newspaper in his defense. 

He’s now concerned that this incident could jeopardize his future hopes for an athletic scholarship.

“Because of his question, our son was disciplined and given THREE days OUT of school suspension for ‘racism,’” his mother said. “He is devastated and concerned that the racism label on his school record will harm his future goal of receiving a track scholarship.”

This is insane.

First and foremost, the student did nothing wrong. While it’s no longer considered politically correct in uber-progressive circles, “illegal alien” is an official term used extensively in current federal laws governing immigration to refer to people who came to this country without authorization or overstayed past their authorization’s expiration. It is a synonym with more fashionable terms such as “undocumented immigrant”; they mean the same thing. 

It is genuinely deranged that a school would punish a student at all, let alone brand him “racist” and jeopardize his future, for using a correct legal term. 

The ironic thing, in a sick way, is that the actual racism here is on the part of the school. Administrators are punishing this student for supposedly being racist toward Hispanic students. But the term “illegal alien” does not refer to Hispanics or have anything to do with race: It applies to any unauthorized immigrant from any country who speaks any language. 

They are the ones who made that logical leap to Hispanics.

But, honestly, even if the student had used an offensive term, is this really how schools should handle such an incident? You’d think a three-day suspension, let alone tarring a student’s record, would only be a last resort after trying to educate the student or help them change the way they discuss certain hot-button issues. Yet the school skipped to a draconian response over something that surely could’ve been handled with far less fanfare. 

If anything, the school should be far more concerned with the student who, according to the reporting, tried to fight this student simply for saying something he found offensive. Newsflash: In the real world, you’ll sometimes hear things you don’t like, and adults can’t resort to violence unless they want to end up in jail. So, maybe the school should focus on teaching its teenage students this basic level of self-control and emotional resilience before tone-policing a student’s one-off question! 

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They may also be violating this student’s First Amendment rights. The courts have given schools greater leeway to regulate speech to maintain order, but students still have rights. According to law professor Eugene Volokh, “If the facts are as described in the press coverage, this would likely be a violation of the First Amendment.”

Indeed it would. But more importantly, it’s yet another sign of a cancel culture utterly devoid of grace that, in the name of progress, is actually setting America back. 

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is an independent journalist, YouTuber, and co-founder of BASEDPolitics.