Let's start it off like this.
3 friends and I were assigned to make a video project for our class.
We came up with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfu1b8a pkV4&fmt=18

Today, the day it was due; all of the videos from each group in my class were shown to the entire class. Ours was singled out for being inappropriate and was immediately cut off.

Tonight, she emailed and called all of the parents to whose children were involved and said how inappropriate and terrible we were. Also, she is lowering our grade significantly and is getting us into other trouble at school not to mention the trouble she is going to cause at some of our homes.

To combat her attempt to revoke our first amendment right, we emailed her this rebuttal.

"Dear Ms. Vilensky,

We feel that you have irresponsibly reacted to our Public Service Announcement project. Here are our reasons to believe so.

1. You looked at our script. You didn't oppose to it. You didn't oppose to anything. The only thing you said was:
"It's perfect except you guys need to show who Evan is."

Our script clearly said:

-Takes a hit and coughs alot-
Noah: "I'm so high."
Jin: "Let me try."
-Takes a small hit and coughs a lot"
Jin: "Whoa!"
Noah and Jin: "We're so high!"

For the entire script, download it from here:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?
nzbojhlmimy
You will need CeltX to view it:
http://celtx.com/download.html

Since you didn't oppose to anything in our script, we thought it was fine and made our video just like the script.

2. Under Requirements it says:
"Must include visual images and narration"

We thought that you wanted us to provide vivid images. So we thought it would give us a better grade if there was actual smoke coming out and not just a pretend thing.

3. Under Goals it says:
"Please feel empowered to contribute to the community by creating content that is interesting yet meaningful."

In my opinion, it is more interesting to watch someone actually smoking and not pretending to smoke.
Pretending to smoke would look very unprofessional and we wanted our PSA to look as professional as possible.
We felt the need to create authentic content to give our PSA a more interesting feel to it.
No one would want to watch a movie in the theaters if all they do is pretend to do things. It needs to look real and authentic in order to catch peoples attention. That is exactly what we did.

4. We smoked oregano that was obtained from MLK Middle School's herb garden, not marijuana.
According to this health article:http://www.blurtit.com/q467951 .html
Smoking oregano does not have any serious effects on health.
"Smoking oregano produces no euphoric high; it will simply make you cough."
"In fact, oregano is often sold on the street by drug dealers who claim that it's marijuana because, when dried and chopped, oregano does look like marijuana."

It looks like marijuana yet does not have any serious affects on our health. The moment we read that article we decided to use oregano because it is harmless to our health and looks just like marijuana. This adds on to the authenticity of the video.

We have worked so hard on this PSA and did a lot of research. Our grade should not be lowered by any means.
You said it was fine last week, yet today you show discontent towards it. If you had told us to change our script to make it more appropriate, we would have done so. However, you did not. Please take some time to reconsider this issue. Thank you for reading this.

Sincerely,
Chase, Noah, Jin and Evan"

What do you guys think? Do you think our teacher was justified to make the decision that she did?
I need some opinions here, because I really am pissed.

-Solo (neoalien12)