Carlsbad Delays Policy Limiting School Clubs

CARLSBAD —  School district trustees here voted unanimously Wednesday night to table action on a controversial policy to ban non-academic clubs from meeting on the high school campus.

About 30 students and parents turned out for the board session and voiced their opinions that the policy needed more study. Board members will take up the matter again next month.

‘We missed the point of the act by not allowing a free exchange of ideas.’

--J. Edward Switzer

Carlsbad trustee

The district will “maintain the status quo until we’ve had a chance to look at it and adopt a policy,” said James Stark, interim superintendent of the Carlsbad School District.

The policy, which was tentatively approved at a board meeting last month, would ban such non-academic student clubs as the ski club, the surf club and the Carlsbad chapter of a national Latino student group, MECHA.

School board members had tentatively accepted the policy after they learned that 17-year-old Detlev Obst wanted to establish a Bible study group on campus. Obst’s pastor gave him a copy of the Equal Access Act, which prohibits high schools from discriminating against students who want to conduct religious meetings.

The trustees fear that allowing one religious club to meet on campus would force them to open school grounds to such cults as the one led by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and to extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

The equal access legislation, which was supported by conservative congressmen and was signed into law by President Reagan in August, prohibits schools that receive federal money from adopting campus meeting policies that discriminate “on the basis of the religious, political, philosophical or other content of speech.”

If a district permits one “non-curriculum-related student group” to meet on campus, the law says that it must grant others the same privilege.

There are groups on campus “that are good for the students, and we’d like to somehow be able to accommodate these groups,” Stark said. The district, however, “is not allowing controversial groups access to the campus.” Although, he acknowledged, “As we interpret the law, we have no right to deny them.”

District officials are working on a plan that would allow acceptable clubs--both academic and non-academic--to meet on campus, Stark said.

Carlsbad Principal Patricia Burden said school officials are trying to protect students, and, at present, the only method to do so is to ban non-academic groups.

“We have concerns about what this could lead to,” she said, referring to opening the campus to non-academic clubs. “Our initial action was to protect the school environment, the student environment and the community.” Burden is concerned that parents will think the school is sanctioning meetings with extremist groups if they’re held on campus.

Trustee J. Edward Switzer, who was absent when the board tentatively approved the policy, said the board was very careful to assure that “the kids were not exposed to bad influences.” But, he said, “We missed the point of the act by not allowing a free exchange of ideas.”

Switzer said trustees could require that each club establish bylaws to make sure the clubs do not discriminate against other students. Switzer said that a faculty adviser would not “knowingly volunteer to sponsor a communist group or a cult.”

Clubs are a “good way for kids to add a little spice in the school curriculum,” he said. “We don’t want to put prior restraints on their right to assemble. I just believe there’s a better way to do it.”