By Diane Petryk
LEWISBURG — High school senior Joseph Moralez said Wednesday that when he was shuffled off into an obscure corner to work on his Obama-Hitler drawing, his freedom of expression was curtailed.
“The minute this piece of art was censored, and taken down, was the minute my right to express myself freely was infringed,” Moralez wrote in a statement to The Daily Item.
“To those who stand in opposition to my actions, I ask you one thing: If my opinions and my art have offended you, would it be fair to say your opinions are offensive to me?”
A couple of weeks ago, Moralez was sketching in a Lewisburg Area High hallway.
“The assistant principal walks by,” Moralez said later Wednesday by phone. “Then he goes to the art teacher. When he came out I was told to put it (the work) in an area where some seniors work on art. ...”
Moralez said the area was secluded.
Moralez was drawing a half-face likeness of President Barack Obama juxtaposed opposite a half-face likeness of Adolf Hitler. He would not say if the dual portrait was intended to make a statement, but that he has frequented anti-Obama Web sites. His Facebook page, which showed he has gone to nobama.com and sarahpalinrockon.com, was removed Wednesday.
It is unknown whether the assistant principal acted independently or in reaction to complaints about the art from students’ parents.
One parent, Bud Hiller, said Moralez’s picture is inappropriate and he isn’t satisfied with the school administration’s handling of the matter. Superintendent Mark DiRocco denied Moralez has been censored and said the administration is acting in accordance with the 1969 Supreme Court ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines, which decided, in a case involving students wearing anti-Vietnam War armbands, that schools may not restrict students’ speech simply to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness of unpopular viewpoints.
“His right to freedom of expression is being granted,” DiRocco said Wednesday.
Moralez, however, was clearly disappointed that his work was not going to be on display in the school. That, he said, was his intention.
DiRocco said not all student art work is hung.
“We have a three-year backlog,” he said. “It’s the school’s decision. The students don’t have the right to decide.”
Moralez wrote: “While I understand my art could be considered offensive, I believe it is also true that all art could be considered offensive. The Mona Lisa could be considered offensive to anyone of the Islamic faith. Where do we draw the line on censorship? ... Where is it fair to say your opinions are right and mine are wrong?
“...We can’t forget that opinions, even the most radical opinions, are still just opinions.
“I understand the disagreement with my opinions that exists,” he continued, “and I thoroughly respect it, but if I back down, and allow my rights to be infringed without protest, I contradict the very thing I am saying here today — in a disagreement of opinions — how do you decide which is right and which is wrong?”
Tuesday, Hiller said Moralez’s art was a “glib portrayal of a very sensitive issue.” He said, to him, it had “deeper meanings” than just a piece of art.
But two weeks ago, the Lewisburg school board, in a special, unannounced meeting to discuss the work, decided no meaning could be gleaned from it alone.
It was ambiguous, school board member Michael Payne said Tuesday.
“There was no clear indication from the picture what the artist was intending,” he said.
“It’s a false assumption that visual images have direct relationship to meaning,” he explained further Wednesday.
Payne said when he looked at the work in question, he saw a lot of space between the two faces and they were bleeding off the opposite sides of the panel. What could be derived from that, he wondered. Perhaps that they were moving apart?
“If there had been an equal sign in the middle, that might have left a lot less ambiguity,” he said. In this controversy, he said, people are projecting onto the work matters from their own experience.
Also, he said, there is a lot of politically contaminated discourse about Obama on the Web and elsewhere that could befuddle a young mind.
As a student, Payne said, Moralez has a right to be extreme, wrong, gross, impolite, and a lot of other things.
“He’s a kid in high school,” he said.
