01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, April 13, 2004

BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- A teenage girl gets busted for wearing a tattoo on her hand that the school administration says is gang-related. She sues the school on the grounds that it has violated her First Amendment rights to self-expression.

As Law and Order would say, it is a case ripped from the headlines, the kind of legal contretemps that crops up in high schools all the time.

Last month, a group of eighth-graders from the Community Prep School, an independent school in South Providence -- not a handful of well-known actors on a popular television drama -- were the ones debating the issue.

It is all part of the Street Law program taught by students at the Ralph R. Papitto School of Law at Roger Williams University. The goal? To teach public school students that the law is something that shapes every part of their lives, from the contracts they sign to the driver's license they hold.

"The law is something alive and well," says John Mattson, coordinator of Rhode Island Youth for Justice and the program's founder. "Teenagers need to understand that, as a citizen, you need to know what your rights and responsibilities are."

Street Law refers to the kinds of cases that strike a chord with students: searching school lockers for weapons or drugs, wearing gang colors, the privacy of e-mail correspondence and the use of offensive language in school.

At Community Prep, an eighth-grade humanities class discusses whether the school had the right to discipline a student for wearing a tattoo. First, the class breaks into small groups. Each one is assigned to defend a particular point of view. Then, Tricia Quest, a second-year law student at Roger Williams, leads the class in Socratic dialogue:

Quest: "Did the school have the right to single her out?"

Student: "No. There was no evidence it was gang-related. She was an honors student."

Quest: "What about the student who mouths off at school? Why shouldn't he have as much credibility as the honors student?"

Student: "No. If an adult sees a kid with baggy clothes, they shouldn't assume that the kid's a gansta."

Quest: "When you sue, you have to have standing. The fact that she had the tattoo removed, should she still be able to bring her case?"

The students agree that the girl had a right to pursue her suit because she was aggrieved at the time the school took action against her.

Quest tells them that the court ultimately ruled that the student's rights had been violated because the school's laws regarding gang activities was too vague. The court also deemed the school's actions unconstitutional because it hadn't put students on notice that gang activities carried specific consequences.

After the discussion, several students said that the class had helped them understand the ways in which the law shapes their everyday behavior.

"I never heard of cases like that before," says Keyla Rodriguez, 13. "Now, I know my rights."

"I never thought about the First Amendment before," says another student, Ruben Walters. "I never thought I could get in trouble by wearing the wrong clothes."

For Quest, teaching a class touched on a career that she had once considered. While she says that the first foray into the classroom was "murder," it got easier over time.

Quest is one of several students writing a Rhode Island version of the Street Law textbook, which was developed by professors at Georgetown University's Law School and includes lessons on civic law, torts and contracts.

"We've taken every unit," Mattson said, "and asked law students to find suitable Rhode Island cases and plan lessons around them."

"All of our students are required to do 20 hours of community service to graduate," said Liz Tobin Tyler, associate director of the Feinstein Institute for Legal Justice at Roger Williams. "The value of Street Law is that students are learning how to translate their legal knowledge to children in the community."

The Roger Williams students receive training in lesson planning and classroom management from Mattson and Jon Shelburne, a visiting associate professor at Roger Williams law school. More than 20 law students participate in the program.

The Street Law program, which has been around for 30 years, has been introduced to nine Rhode Island high schools, and Mattson hopes to include other schools in the future.