By Mark David Blum, Esq.

We live in a world that has transitioned the role our schools play. Where they used to be legally defined as being substitute parents for our children during the time our children were in their care, nowadays schools have taken it upon themselves to parent the parents outside of school hours and to dominate activities off school property. Where the law historically enabled schools to behave en loco parentis, today’s schools have gone completely loco in their abuse and use of that power.

In theory; when you take your children to school, the school assumes parental authority and responsibility for the child for so long as the child is in the school’s care. That is called “en loco parentis” – Latin for “in place of the parents”. As a concept; it is a good one and necessary under the circumstances. Over the years and after endless battles amongst lawyers, the role of Loco Parentis has been given great expanse by the Courts to the point that schools can now regulate the behavior of our children way beyond the school day or the school’s boundaries.

Recently, at Liverpool High School, an enterprising person or persons created a MySpace page purporting to show scantily clad L.H.S. females posed in sexually and sensually provocative manners. Once found out by Administrators, the site was taken down and the hunt is on for the person(s) who created the page. Presumably, the School District is intending civil and even criminal process again the page’s creator.

School Boards taken over by busybody PC moralists, Christian extremists, Republicans, and self anointed ‘super parents’ have pushed and expanded the laws and reach of the school well beyond its modern day boundaries. Our schools randomly drug test our children, they control off school behaviors, schools monitor web usage, and reserve for themselves the right to involve DSS in any situation that school personnel find inconsistent with their moral perception.

On the flip side, these same institutions control what kids wear at school. Bathrooms are locked for traffic control. Union protected teachers and fat salaried Administrators use herd mentality and collective punishment to minimize their actual work load. Language is monitored, speakers are banned, hats, gloves, and certain colors are banned. Read any textbook and see how history is sanitized, social studies are empty, and music and writing are continually censored.

At issue with Liverpool High School is the same as it is at Fayetteville Manlius High School. Both situations involve young hot sexy teenaged females in positions that make adults uncomfortable. Rather than deal with their feelings of inadequacy, these adults instead transfer their insecurities to the children and make the children feel guilty for doing nothing more than being human beings. Whether they are dancing or posing, it is the older adult males and gravity sullen aging females who are the loudest voices against young women expressing themselves as sexual beings. Perhaps too are included those adults and students who themselves are now or have previously been repressed and denied access to sexual expression.

What we have seen transform in our society is the transformation of women of not only into command of the workplace and public life, but also a transformation over which they have learned to be free and at peace with their sexuality. Through clothes and music, among others, today’s free woman, one unbound by constraints of relegation or submissive social pressure, has learned to dance with her own body and to celebrate herself. Instead of taking shame or hiding desires and that she is a sexual and sensual human being, modern feminism and the role women are assuming in society casts aside the traditional roles and challenges men as sexual equals.

Teenage and young adult female bodies are glorious creations of God. If you dispute that, your argument is with the designer. To see any one of them, especially through the eyes of a near 50 year old man, bring joy to one’s heart. Such tight and beautiful bodies remind us that we too are sexual beings and though not as sexy as we once were, we still have that aspect to our humanity. Sexuality to a human being is as important to the ego and spirit as love, friendship, food, and oxygen.

What may rush through my mind upon viewing a female is my secret. Upon what my eyes may affix is not the business of government. In Liverpool, the stated primary concern of the school Administration is just that; what am I going to do with my eyes. The school claims to be worried about predators seeing the pictures. Does the Liverpool School District concern itself that some old fat aging lonely man is going to see a picture of a Liverpool Hottie and masturbate over the image? The possibility of that event, however insignificant is a pathetic and petty reason to invoke the full power of government ordered censorship.

Changing facts and scenarios are favorite games lawyers play and so let us engage here: Substitute for the girls in skimpy clothes and poses, the Boy’s Basketball Team or the Boy’s Swim Team. Photograph them in ‘come hither’ poses; shirtless, sweaty, and flexed. Would be having this discussion today? Would that website be taken down? Entitle the webpage, “Boys and Their Balls” and pose a high school boy with a different ball from a different sport.

What will Liverpool busybody Administrators do when the seasons change? Are the new rules and reach of government going to drape every female student in Burkahs and Hijabs when the summer comes around? In but a few months, there are going to be tens of thousands of young teen and adult females wearing their sexiest bathing suits around swimming pools, lakes and rivers. Short shorts and skimpy tops will burst out in the heat, and summer dresses will barely clad young women on summer’s eves. Will Liverpool High School be sending spies to see which and whom amongst its students is daring to be sexy? If the school can reach out and strike down a website, what is to stop them from striking down a pool party?

As the father of two daughters, I take no glee in knowing that men are ogling them and their girlie parts. I know well in my heart and can even see it in their eyes sometimes, that passers-by would sell their souls to stick their hands down my girls’ panties. This does not warm the cockles of my heart. It is not pleasant to think that somewhere out there, a man (or woman) may be fantasizing about my child while ejaculating into Kleenex.

But at the same time, I remember back when I was in this age bracket and other than sex, not much else was going on inside my head. It was all we did as teenagers was to find ways to make ourselves attractive to others. After all, biology commands this to be the prime period in life for procreation and reproduction. Besides, it is also the stage in life where one is learning of their bodies and the power and control that comes with using it.

In other words, what we see with the Liverpool Hotties is nothing more than age appropriate behavior. Hiding behind the argument of potential masturbating predators, it is apparent that the voices raised loudest in protest are adults feeling shame or peers who are rejected from the list. Of course, the moralists too are offended, but their posture is inconsistent with freedom.

It is the argument of the predator upon which the law will enable the school to reach way beyond its geographic boundaries and hours of operation. As they tap into the internet, schools could easily have bots trolling the ether and inflict punishment at a later time for the content of conversations, or postings and pictures exchanged amongst friends and groups.

Syracuse City Schools just drafted a new rule that defines what internet savvy folks know as “flaming” and are captioning it as “harassment” and then making “harassment”; even off campus and after hours, a punishable offense. The schools are reaching our farther, digging deeper, and going way beyond their intended mission. In doing so, they are naming themselves as our super parents and assumed for themselves the power to decide what my child may do outside the school’s actual jurisdiction.

No parent, no adult wants to imagine their child as a sexual being. In doing so, we admit our own mortality as well as our own jealousy.

Fear of sex or aging however, is not now nor can it ever be allowed to serve as a legitimate basis for government censorship. More important still is that school based censorship must not be allowed to reach beyond the four walls and limited calendar that school actually is involved in our children’s lives.

Once you admit government censorship into your life, you have given up a core fundamental right. Our schools are failing their basic role. Instead of educating, they are inviting the devil into the classroom and throwing out the Constitution in the process.