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			LARRY V. LOCKNEY

Tell us what you think about LARRY V. LOCKNEY.

Selected submissions will be posted here, so check back regularly and join the discussion.

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11/02/2007

I do think that Larry Did the right thing in his mind, he has courage that most people whished they had. How ever I would like to send him a letter by postal serve to tell him this in detail, would you mind sending me this in formation please.

Douglas Frank

10/05/2004
Bob Burnitt
BobBurnitt@sbcglobal.net
Midlothian Texas

Right on Larry!!!!!!!!! Thank You so much for standing up for all our rights!!!!!! You and your family are heroes to me. Thanks Again, Bob Burnitt

10/24/2003
Ambur
Joshua Texas

Drug testing is wrong in schools. If a star football player wants to go home and smoke a joint and then go to the game on friday and do his best sobar it should all be ok. what the students on their free time is their own business. As long as they sobar. they have the freedom by the laws a regulations of their constitution to as they please away from school. My friends that are on the football team say they are now drug testing them by takeing their hair and testing it. This has to be stopped.This is wrong and unconstitutional.

Jackie
North Carolina

Even though it has been over a year since most of the comments were posted, I just watched the documentary this evening for the first time. One of the speakers said they had witnessed children getting into a suspected drug dealer's car, take a short ride and then return to school. This person should have enough responsibility to report the tag number to the police. Majority doesn't rule, minority doesn't rule, right over wrong should rule. If a teacher thinks she should quit teaching school because of this situation she isn't much of a teacher. She is showing the students that if you disagree with someone on a subject and your position isn't chosen as the right or justifiable one, just get mad and quit. She should rethink her position and her attitude.

scurry texas

weed should be legal our economy would flurish but set laws for it like drinking.

Chuck Martin
csjmartin@aol.com
Lockney, Texas

I just finished watching the film Larry vs Lockney. I am a local police officer and the one that ran the operation that Chief Edwards spoke to you about in the film. My brother is a school board member that devolped the policy. The film was good, however, I thought it may have been a little one sided toward Larry's side. Since the policy was done away with we have had more students fail classes and the drug use in our town has increased. I have noticed that an Oklahoma school just won there battle with drug testing in the U.S. Supreme Court. I told NBC TODAY program when the media was in Lockney covering this top story "Schools are for learning and when a child enters the school they should be prepared to learn. If they are on narcotics they cannot and they disrupt other student that have a desire to learn. If it takes mandantory drug testing to help students learn it should be done. Just as in some states students enter schools and go through metal detectors to make sure they are not carrying weapons to disrupt learning at schools.

Gary Cooper
biggaryc@yahoo.com
Dallas, Texas

Larry vs. Lockney is one of the best documentaries I have ever seen (and I've seen hundreds). It shows better than mere words ever could how difficult and fragile democracy is, and how easily well-meaning, decent people can be led to give up their own constitutional rights and deny others their rights. The illusion of safety can make people do mad things. Then they will think, say and do even madder things to prove that the mad decisions were the right ones. The people of Lockney are not alone in this, they are like all the rest of us.

Brutus
nineleagueboots@hotmail.come
Bedford, TX

School is not the place to strip liberties from citizens. As the facts stand, the idea that we can force children to abandon their rights to reach a goal set by the state is un-American one and points to a problem found in many School Boards and Administrations. The purview of the board and the school has been allowed to be to expand into areas that are not in their scope. If teachers can spot the drug users than get them out of the class and in jail, the police provide this service not the schools. We seem to have forgotten our history this time. The Constitution protects the guilty as well as the innocent from loss of rights. "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves" W. Pitt (1783). Comparing metal detectors to urine testing is not the same, it is apples and oranges. Why not test the whole town, drug dealers have to supply the students, so get the whole town going.

Casey
Dallas

I loved the Larry v. Lockney PBS show! Amazing. Do the teachers and school board really think that drug testing would "fix" all drug problems? Do these people think they should be able to control parents who don't want their kids to have the drug test? Why would it not be acceptable for a parent to opt out? Larry and his family have such courage! I'm so proud of them for standing up for what they believe in. I can't believe that Larry lost his job and that their dog was shot at. Larry wasn't trying to control anyone. What a great man and family this is. Thanks!

Johnny
Texas

I just finished watching the documentary and am still astonished. What many Americans fail to understand, including many of the people in Lockney, is that this country was not founded on the principles of democracy, but rather on the principles of the republic. If there was a village of 5,000 people, and they believed in order to prosper they must kill an innocent girl, then democracy would say that the girl would die. It is for this reason that democracy CANNOT dictate every decision. As humans we have inalienable rights, and as Americans we have rights granted to us by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that should never be taken away, no matter what the majority of the people think. Larry is a true American hero that has the courage we read about in history books. I hope that some day I will be able to fight for liberty the way that Larry did in Lockney.

Adam Duckworth
amd00b@acu.edu
Abilene, TX

I was just flipping through channels when I discovered the "Larry vs. Lockney" program on KERA tonight. It occurs to me that, though the ACLU thought they were championing the cause of the "little guy" who's rights were being ignored by the majority, it is actually the citizens of Lockney and their elected school board leaders whose rights were being ignored by the larger purpose and infinitely greater legal power of the ACLU. I became increasingly frustrated, while watching this program, by the fact that, though the entire community stood behind the decisions of their trusted elected leaders, they were all defeated, not by Larry Tanahill, but by ACLU lawyers who have little other interest in the people of Lockney. And now that the ACLU has grabbed its political victory, forgotten Lockney, and moved on to other battles, Lockney's citizens are left reeling at how their wisdom and opinions were brushed aside by the powerful ACLU. In addition their hands are now tied to deal with the ever-increasing drug problem in the schools. In this case, those in powerful positions far from this little West Texas town crushed the will of the local elected leaders and that is truly un-American!

Vu Nguyen
Richardson, Texas

Although I can understand the intent of Lockneyís drug policy--that they want to address a problem that is seriously detracting from delivering a quality education--I cannot agree with the school board's solution to the problem. I grew up in West Texas and share many of the same values as Lockneyís citizens. However, Larry vs. Lockney is an illustration of what democracy at its worse can often be, a tyranny of the majority. Many well-intentioned teachers who have felt the threat of a drugged teenager may genuinely feel what one interviewee said: "This is a democracy,... majority rules." That sentiment is misplaced and the policy is ill conceived, which means we MUST sacrifice a potentially powerful weapon for school safety. The School Board committed the same egregious error that many governments have committed, the majority agreeing among themselves to cede their own rights, and that of others, and not allowing the dissenter to say, "No, I will keep my rights regardless of what you decide." Many seemingly intractable societal problems exist todayódrugs in schools to global terrorismóbut we must continue to resist enforcing our own solutions upon our neighbors at the expense of our freedoms.

One point I wanted to make about the show--You do not have to get on airplanes. Yes, we are searched before boarding, but we can take a car, train, boat. You do have to go to school! Air safety and school safety are two different things.

Chris Gransden

Whitney, TX

I can only applaud Larry for standing up for his and his childrens rights. It appears that the parents in favor of madatory testing are unwilling to take responsibility for their parenting decisions. They want to say "Its not my decision the school makes us". As a parent you have to make unpopular decisions everday. The school is there to educate not to dictate. If all the parents in favor of mandatory testing signed their children up for voluntary testing then whats the problem as the vast majority of students will be tested. The problem is then they would have to say that" this is my decision as a parent and you as my child will abide by it like it or not ". Its frightening that the mob mentality of this town would have won if it hadn't been for the courage of one man. Being in the majority does not mean that you are right.I have lived all over the world now I live in a small town in Texas, it has been my experience that small towns breed small minds. Congratulations Larry on your victory for all of us.

Chris McCall
mccallcl@hotmail.com
Dallas, TX

Considering the light in which many of the film's "cast" could have been portrayed, I feel that is was suprisingly even-handed. Just because the citizens of Lockney didn't have much to say doesn't mean that they weren't granted enough time to say it. I am reminded of an interview with the "queen bee" of Lockney, where she said of other parents, "I wouldn't take their job in a heartbeat". That doesn't even make sense! Maybe the schools of Lockney are failing, but if that's the case, it seems they failed a while ago. You could almost hear her fragile psyche crumble under the burden of being told "no" for the first time. In response to Chuck Martin's remarks: if drug use in Lockney was so rampant as to completely render the school useless, your argument would have more merit. Metal detectors and random searches are a last resort. What other methods of drug use prevention were tried first? A student that smoked pot last saturday night is certainly far less disruptive than one sitting drunk in biology _right now_.

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