On most days, Daniel Capone and Miriam Loebnan do not receive a summons to the principal's office and wouldn't worry if they did.

International Baccalaureate program students at Upper St. Clair High School high school, they're pretty solid stuff: studious, well-behaved, civic-minded.

		Dennis Roddy is a Post-Gazette staff writer (droddy@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1965).

Waiting outside principal Timothy Steinhauer's office along with two other students, they were about to find out that civic-mindedness isn't always lauded. One-by-one, they were called in to answer questions inspired by the following e-mail sent to the superintendent by a member of the newly elected school board:

I would like a written report from your office as soon as possible or by Dec. 6, 2005 as to the administration's findings concerning the IB students' "spontaneous" participation in the recent election for the School Board. Of particular interest is Clark Remington's role in these activities.

Over the next hour, the students were asked about Dr. Remington, coordinator of the IB program. Did he recruit kids to campaign in the election? Was he around for any meetings? Where did students get a copy of a transcript of a public debate by board candidates?

"It was an intimidating situation," Mr. Capone said. "It was almost like an interrogation. I suspected the school board asked him to do this after they had won and I think pitting students against their teachers does nothing to benefit the student-teacher relationship."

Miss Loebnan mentioned how she got her own copy of the debate transcript, the one in which one of the candidates, Daniel Iracki, hinted broadly that he didn't think much of the IB program because it ran counter to "Judeo-Christian values." A classmate had one and she asked Dr. Remington for permission to photocopy it. Apparently, that's enough to get an educator in political trouble these days.

"I thought it was rather strange that they were trying to get us to talk against our teachers," Miss Loebnan said. "I didn't think it boded well, I supposed, because if they were already trying to get teachers in trouble for students' political actions, what else were they going to do?"

They found out quickly.

The new school board floated -- then abandoned -- a proposed "Political Activities" policy. After the requisite boilerplate about free speech, the proposal forbade any political activity on school property without board permission, forbids the circulation of political materials on district property, and "the use or recruitment of students for writing, addressing or distributing partisan political materials by employees or students during school hours."

Had the policy passed, it would have shut down student political activity anywhere near the place they are, in theory, being taught how to be useful citizens in a democracy.

Instead, the board voted to eliminate the IB program, touching off a political row that ended with a lawsuit and a retreat by the board.

Superintendent James Lombardo, who received the e-mail ordering up the report on the students and Dr. Remington, declined to discuss the matter, citing student and personnel confidentiality. Dr. Steinhauer ignored repeated calls asking his side. Dr. Remington, when reached, seemed both shaken and a bit beaten down. He had nothing to say.

Mr. Bluey was more forthcoming. His curiosity was sparked, he said, when he saw Dr. Remington at the polling place at Fort Couch Middle School, where he also saw IB students passing out literature for an opposing candidate, Amy Billerbeck.

"They were passing out literature with some quotes and all that stuff," Mr. Bluey said. "I was fine with that but the IB coordinator, Clark Remington, I overheard him having a conversation with Amy Billerbeck asking 'did my kids come up here to support you guys?' I just wanted to have Dr. Lombardo look into whether that was supported by the faculty or whether it was spontaneous with the kids."

Ms. Billerbeck said she can't recall such a conversation. She isn't sure she saw Dr. Remington that day.

Mr. Bluey said a report on the matter was given at a closed session of the board and, as he recalls it, "some form of minor, minor reprimand" was handed out to somebody.

There are a few ways to interpret the events at Upper St. Clair. When the board tried to shut down the IB program they invoked none of the more volatile rhetoric -- including Dr. Iracki's "Judeo-Christian values" shibboleth, or board member Mark Tombetta's reference to the IB programs invocation of the Earth Charter, a document he described as Marxist. Instead, they cited cost-savings. After a lawsuit costing as much as the IB program's yearly budget, the board restored IB for two years.

The disconnection between ideology and reasons given for eliminating the IB program is one reason to worry about those one-on-one talks between the principal and the students who campaigned against the board.

Just as cost-savings was the imaginary excuse for ditching IB, these students have to wonder about the sincerity of school directors who talk about free speech, but have four kids hauled in for a few friendly questions when their side loses an election.

Was the board at Upper St. Clair worried about reining in a faculty member or his students?

"It achieves the same end," said Clay Calvert, co-director of the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment, based at Pennsylvania State University. "The act of calling students into an administrator's office in a public school can clearly have a chilling effect on speech. It can be an intimidating process that might cause a student in the future to stifle his or her own speech because of fear of retaliation, whether real or imagined."

That, of course, is the troublesome thing about free speech. It requires a willingness to speak out despite the seed of fear that grows in the empty spaces of the imagination -- spaces as still and silent as the hallway outside a principal's office.