Television and movies may have cheerleaders pegged as the popular girls that have it all, but the life of a cheerleader can be pretty tough. Out of all the athletes in America, cheerleaders sustain the most injuries each year. They cheer in rain or shine, sleet or snow, and whether their team is winning or losing — and they have to look like they absolutely love it. A Sept. 16 ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has also added one more duty to this list: cheerleaders have to cheer for any athlete on their team, even if that athlete happens to be their rapist.
At a basketball game in 2008, a cheerleader at Silsbee High School in Texas declined to do just that and, consequently, paid the price.
The cheerleader, just 16 years old, was at a party during football season when athlete Rakheem Bolton, a fellow teammate, and another boy forced her into a bedroom and sexually assaulted her. It wasn’t until others tried to enter the room that the boys stopped their attack, fleeing through the bedroom window.
At school, things only got worse for the girl, who was advised by school administrators to avoid the cafeteria and received suggestions against participating in the school’s homecoming activities.
But when it came time to root for Bolton during basketball season, she refused. Faced with the ultimatum to cheer for her attacker or be kicked off the squad, the girl chose the second option, ending her career as a Silsbee cheerleader.
The girl may have given up her pom-pons, but she wouldn’t give up the right to practice her First Amendment freedoms. Claiming that their daughter "was punished because of her 'symbolic expression' not to cheer for Bolton," her parents decided to sue the district attorney, the school district and the school's principal, reports the First Amendment Center. Unfortunately, the 5th Circuit Court didn’t agree with this claim.
As a cheerleader, the girl “served as a mouthpiece through which [the school district] could disseminate speech — namely, support for its athletic teams,” ruled the three-judge panel. When it came down to it, “[school officials] had no duty to promote [the girl’s] message by allowing her to cheer or not cheer, as she saw fit," it said.
In accepting the school’s decision to refuse the girl a choice to exercise that right, the court upheld that a cheerleader cannot refuse to cheer based on First Amendment grounds and placed all responsibility on the girl, still a minor, and none of it with the adults at the school — the same adults whose only counsel to the girl was to avoid her assailant. If anything, the ruling excused the school officials from any responsibility at all.
Obligation or not, what it comes down to isn’t a question of whether the school should have supported the girl’s decision, but why wouldn’t it?
Zachary Patterson, a 16-year-old at Beloit Memorial High School in Wisconsin, asked the same question when he was forced to remove a shirt that represented his support of same-sex marriage. The experiences of students like Patterson and the Silsbee cheerleader show that school officials across the nation seem to have forgotten that students do not “shed their constitutional rights when they enter the schoolhouse door,” as was affirmed in Tinker v. Des Moines.
School officials may claim that some limitation is necessary to meet educational objective, but when that authority is overstepped, First Amendment rights are crossed.
The Silsbee cheerleader may have lost the school’s support, but what she kept is more important — the pride and dignity gained by having the courage to stand up for one’s convictions is no substitute to any cheerleading uniform.
Reach Jessica at jrstone3@asu.edu
