While learning about the 1st Amendment, the Journalism Essentials class had an activity with a mock court case. The students were put in a scenario about teacher Kit Haris, “the libeler,” who allegedly saw Jett Rood, “the Libelee,” at a Kwik Shop in Baldwin City, and reported that Jett “stole Gatorade.”
This activity was designed to help students better understand their 1st Amendment rights.
“Well, according to our false case wear the class made, I saw Jett at a Kwik Shop stealing Gatorade while he was running out. I tried to trip him,” Harris said
For this hypothetical case, the students decided that it constituted slander. Harris had to head to a Kwik Shop early in the morning, and he became suspicious that Rood was stealing Gatorades, which led to the attempted “trip.”
”But he was too athletic and jumped over my trip attempt, then did a forward roll and began to run out of the store to his fake getaway car,” Harris jokingly explained.
Rood is a freshman at BHS and plays football for the high school team.
“All I was trying to do was buy my Gatorades, but when I looked outside, my car was allegedly being stolen,” Rood said. “I then started to run to my car that was being ‘stolen’ when Harris supposedly ‘tripped’ me.” Rood Joked.
“I had several bruises all over his arms that were caused by the trip,” Rood said, trying to win over the students’ minds in the fake case. When Kit arrived at school, he started to say, “Jett steals Gatorades.”
“My client was falsely accused and slandered over this fake scenario,” said Lawrence Jenkins, the class ‘lawyer’ for Rood.
The whole class was split into two; one side was for Harris and the other side was for Rood. Jett and his class ‘lawyers’ decided to fake sue Harris for slander, and the student ‘jury’ ended up deciding that Rood won the alleged class case.
“I think that this alleged case was not a fair trial; it was a student ‘Jury’,” Haris joked.” “Students are well known to be against teachers.”
The students claimed that this assignment was very beneficial and helped them better understand their First Amendment rights.