I am wondering if we are going to have trouble on our hands soon from our own people rather than the terrorist. Does it seem like we are heading for a civil war or is that too dramatic and overstates the case?
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3323602,00.html
Secret Service pays visit to Boulder High
By Hector Gutierrez, Rocky Mountain News
November 12, 2004
Bob Dylan's Masters of War is a hard-hitting, anti-war song produced more than 20 years before any current Boulder High School student was born.
More than 40 years after its release, the song has been resurrected at Boulder High with huge and confusing repercussions that prompted Secret Service agents to pay the campus a visit Thursday.
Some students and parents apparently let the Secret Service and talk-radio stations know they were unhappy with the plan of a trio of students to do a poetry reading of the song, accompanied by background music, according to Ron Cabrera, the school's principal.
Rumors were rampant that during an audition and rehearsal for today's talent show, the students changed Dylan's powerful last verse at the end of the song to say that they hoped that President Bush was going to die.
The last verse begins: "And I hope that you die; And your death'll come soon."
Secret Service agents interviewed Cabrera on Thursday to determine what all the uproar was about and whether any threats were being made against the president's life.
"They were following up and doing their due diligence," Cabrera said of the agents' visit. "They had been receiving calls from the community and, in the course of the talk show, felt like they had heard (the students) inciting physical harm to the president."
Cabrera said he talked to the students and teachers who have been working with them, and he was told the group, which calls itself the Coalition of the Willing, made no reference to Bush.
"I don't know why it surfaced," Cabrera said of the complaints. "I think they're surprised by all the allegations."
Cabrera said he also showed the agents the lyrics of the entire song. The agents appeared to have left satisfied that no bona-fide threat was being directed at the president, he said.
The principal said the students' performance of the song at the talent show upholds their right to express themselves, and he did not think it was inappropriate in a campus setting.
A Secret Service spokesman could not be reached for comment.
Cabrera acknowledged that the group did consider at one time naming itself the "Tali-banned." A teacher persuaded the teens to drop the title because it was offensive, he said.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002088498_webveterans11.html
Principal apologizes for speakers at Veterans Day assembly
By The Associated Press
BELLINGHAM ?- Two members of Veterans for Peace got a standing ovation when they addressed a high-school Veterans Day assembly, but their appearance prompted a letter of apology from the principal.
Sehome High School officials received some complaints that yesterday's event was too one-sided, principal Jim Kistner said. He told The Bellingham Herald that staff members had said that graphic descriptions of war had upset a number of students.
"I want to apologize for making any student or staff member uncomfortable because the presentation at Sehome's Veterans Day Assembly today was used to advance a particular political agenda," Kistner wrote in the letter distributed to students.
"Our community speakers had agreed that this assembly would honor our veterans. We deeply regret that they did not."
"I completely disagree with that last statement," Marshall Petryni, 17, a student organizer of the assembly, said in a telephone interview today with The Associated Press.
"A bunch of kids came up to me after ?- some were crying, some gave me hugs," Petryni said.
One of the speakers, Mark Polin, who served in the Navy from 1979 to 1997, told the gathering of nearly 1,000 students that Veterans Day was originally Armistice Day ?- commemorating an end to war.
In a telephone interview today from his Bellingham home, Polin said he was at the assembly "to honor the warrior and not the war. The way to honor veterans is to not keep repeating the same mistakes and sending young men and women to their deaths."
Army veteran Ben Sherman, author of "Medic: The Story of a Conscientious Objector in the Vietnam War," described war casualties in detail to the students and unfurled a scroll with the names of the more than 1,100 U.S. troops killed so far in Iraq.
They were introduced to the audience by Dr. Bob Olson of Bellevue, a World War II veteran who founded the Bellingham chapter of Veterans for Peace, Sherman said, noting that three generations of veterans were represented.
"We weren't there to tell them to believe one way or another," he said today his Mercer Island home. "We were there to say, 'Here's the cost. Maybe your generation will find ways it won't cost that much.' Any veteran who's been in a war will tell you there has to be a better way to solve our problems than this."
The men received standing ovations, and students gathered afterward to shake their hands.
"It wasn't your normal Veterans Day ceremony," Sherman said, adding, "If he'd had three generals talk about how wonderfully we're doing in Iraq ... would he then write a letter to parents about how only one side of the story was told? That side is always told."
Two parents who attended had strong reactions ?- one pro, the other con.
"I believe it was totally inappropriate for the venue," said Amy Thomas, mother of Sehome junior Hannah Thomas. "It was an assembly to honor the veterans. This gentleman (Polin) used it as a platform for his political agenda. I thought it was disappointing, and hurtful to any veterans who were there."
"The speakers were incredible," said Elizabeth Rocks, mother of junior Erika Harrington. "They were veterans who said what it meant to be in a war. I think kids need to hear that. I can see how people can say it's one-sided, and yet it's just as one-sided to have a Veterans Day assembly that's full of nothing but flags and patriotic songs."
The assembly also included recognition of school staff members who are veterans, recitation of John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Field," Sehome's choir singing "America the Beautiful" and a bagpipe rendition of "Amazing Grace." It closed with "Taps."
"One girl said to me, 'I never understood Taps till today,' " Sherman recalled.
"If the principal wanted to honor veterans, why did he write a letter apologizing for us standing up and telling the truth?" Sherman said. "We appreciate the students who thanked us and showed us such respect."
Kistner's letter said the school would make counselors available for students or staff who needed them. A second Veterans Day assembly is planned, he said.
He said he was not told the speakers belonged to a peace organization, and that he would review the process for arranging assemblies.
"No blame, nobody is in trouble," Kistner told The Herald.
