What does the president have to do with this? Just so you understand: the student's rights at the graduation and my rights (freedom of speech) as a voter are slightly different.
Well, I've seen potentially contradictory (to what you've said) behavior from you, and so I'm just trying to understand, you know, where you're coming from in terms of what's ethical.
I've seen you speak negatively about the President, so I was using him as an example.
By the way, freedom of speech rights are yours whether or not you vote.
School is a personal choice. I don't have to finish highschool, and if I have a problem with my highschool then I can make a personal choice to change it. Additionally, there's only a few hundred people in a school, so it's a lot more personal. If I said bad things about my University, it's a drop in the bucket, but if I say bad things about my school it's more meaningful.
On the other hand, if I live in a country with an evil president (I'm not saying that Bush is evil, I'm using this as an example) and I don't like it, I haven't got a lot of choice. I can vote for somebody else, and I might be able to leave the country, but the options are extremely limited.
Thus, I think that speaking out against the president (not necessarily
slander, as you said) is different than speaking out against the school.
I do think that both forms fall under freedom of speech, and thus I do condone both. However, I agree that speaking out against your school is disrespectful towards it, and it's not appropriate. Speaking out against your president is also disrespectful towards him, but if he is evil or bad then he deserves it.
Oh, so I see, it's disrespectful to tell the hard truth about something, but it's a "freedom of speech" issue when you slander the President.
Are you using the word "slander" because it's emotionally loaded, or because it's the appropriate word? I doubt that GameSnake orally said to you any false claims about the president in order to damage his (the president's) reputation, so I'm guessing you used it because it's emotionally loaded. In general, words like "slander" should be avoided unless that's really the situation. The main point of "slander" is that it's oral, if you want to talk about written falsehoods designed to damage somebody's reputation then you're looking for the word "libel". Of course, "libel" isn't as emotionally loaded, so...
