s behavior, because not only did the expression of some certain students violate the privacy and physical security of others, but it also interfered with the purpose and operation of a public school, effectively a Constitutionally ordained body, by the "establishment clause" of the First Amendment (23).It was this distinction that allowed Gewin to declare that the First Amendment does not confer "an absolute right to speak" and that "the law recognizes that there can be an abuse of such freedom" (23). In Blackwell, the school's state-sanctioned function vested it with the power to adjudicate Constitutional freedoms within its own walls, in the following manner: "It is always within the province of school authorities to provide by regulation the prohibition and punishment of acts calculated to undermine the school routine. This is not only proper in our opinion but is necessary (24)". It is highly important to note that the decision handed down in Blackwell did not in any way negate, deny or diminish the students' Constitutional right to freedom of expression, it recognized that the school was empowered to qualify the Constitutional guarantee when its own best interests and its own mission were jeopardized (25).In The Great Monkey Trial: Science vs. Fundamentalism in America by Tom McGowen, the conflict of establishment and free speech was again considered and in many ways clarified by the May, 1991, decision of a Pennsylvania District Court in the case of Slotterback v. Interboro School District (117). The principal character in the case, Scott Slotterback, distributed Christian religious tracts bearing witness to the Christian faith over 40 times between November, 1989, and May, 1990, in school hallways, the cafeteria and, on one occasion, a classroom (120). Some teachers complained that the fliers and booklets Slotterback passed out were littering the hallways, and objections increased when students allegedly began obstructing the hal...
