Wyoming School to Honor Student: Wear the Mask or Wear Handcuffs
Laramie High School Grace Smith and her father Andrew Smith react to the suspension and arrest following daughters decision to break mask mandate rule
BY STEPHEN GREEN
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
It’s a brutal equation some American schools and universities are teaching students this fall: wear the mask or wear handcuffs.
The most recent example comes from Laramie High School in Wyoming.
Last week, police forcibly removed a 16-year-old honor student — in handcuffs — for defying her school’s mask mandate.
Grace Smith, a junior, took video of the incident which was later posted by her father, Andy Smith, on YouTube.
As you can see, the scene was both peaceful and outrageous: The school required two good-sized policemen to cuff and remove one skinny young lady who resisted in no way whatsoever.
The charge? Trespassing, according to Fox News.
Even crazier, the entire school was locked down for 90 minutes during what the Laramie Boomerang described as a “showdown of wills” between Grace and school administrators.
The young outlaw was apparently standing peacefully in the school lobby, awaiting her fate, when the lockdown order was given.
Grace had already been suspended the previous week, also for not wearing a mask. When she returned on Tuesday, it was with a plan. “After talking with our attorney,” she told the Boomerang, “we decided to push it. So on Tuesday I didn’t (leave) and took the citation for $500 and then left.”
When she came back the third time, on Thursday of last week, she refused to leave, arguing she had a right to attend her high school and not wear the mask.
That’s when the police were called in.
“They told us how this was going to play out before it happened,” Andy Smith was quoted saying. “They all said they were not going to arrest kids. But she was taken into custody, handcuffed, and brought down to the detention center.”
Albany County School District #1 instituted the mask mandate due to a “surge” in local COVID-19 cases, but I was unable to find any reports of a corresponding surge in COVID-related hospitalizations or deaths.
The Wyoming honor student now has multiple suspensions on her record and a $500 fine to pay.