Heritage Christian School and Moral Responsibility: Tyler Frost

Reactions to the Heritage Christian School beautifully illustrate the problem with America today.  All sorts of people think that the rules of the school are downright silly.  And they may be right.  The problem, alas, is that this is the school that Tyler Frost chose to attend.  This is the school whose rules Tyler Frost indicated that he accepted by signing a document to that effect.  This is the school who warned him that attending the prom would have consequences. 

Given this backdrop, I find it stupefying that anyone should think that the problem here lies with the rules of the school and, moreover, the willingness of the school to impose consequences for violating them.  The proof of this comes from a rather unsuspecting quarter, name sororities and fraternities on college campuses.  Sororities and fraternities typically have rather unusual pledging activities for those who want to join them.  I can easily see how a student may find the pledging activities disgusting.  But guess what?  No student has to pledge a fraternity or sorority. 

As silly and as archaic as anyone may think that Heritage Christian School’s views are about dancing and so forth, the simple fact of the matter is that the rules are not immoral and, what is more, Tyler did not have to attend Heritage Christian School.

Thus, it is ludicrous to suppose that Frost has grounds for complaint.  And it is even more ludicrous that Frost’s stepfather should think that some form of legal action is appropriate here.  And if any court should rule in favor of Frost, the court’s doing so will set a horrendous legal precedent. 

Part of what it means to live in a free society is that persons have the right to join or to refrain from joining organizations.  Needless to say, one very good reason for not joining (or ending one’s membership with) an organization is none other than that one does not like the rules of that organization (or one stopped liking its rules).  There is a fancy legal term for this sort of thing.  It is called: exercising one’s freedom of choice. 

Whether or not I agree with the rules of the Heritage Christian School, the fact of the matter is that the school is unambiguously clear about the fact that dancing on the part of its members is not permitted. 

Now some have argued that the school has no jurisdiction over what a person does away from the school.  Accordingly, Frost’s dancing on non-school property is not something for which the school can rightly penalize him.  Well, we should be clear about what the school is doing.  It is not making any claims about the legality of dancing.  Rather, the school has a criterion for membership; and criteria of that sort can be both wide-ranging and arbitrary.  Here is rather arbitrary one: The Magna Français School only accepts students whose parents have a net worth of $1 million at the time of their child’s enrollment.  There is no correlation whatsoever between intellectual ability or good moral character and having that amount of net worth about this requirement. 

Now, I am rather certain that if there were a Magna Français School few, there would be precious few who would complain about it.  Quite the contrary, I am sure that all sorts of people would characterize the school as elite. 

Well, the Heritage Christian School is none other than a religiously elite high school.  It is not for the religiously or morally faint of heart.  It is not for those who have deep religious “commitment” only on days of worship or only when they are in a certain milieu.  Neither you nor I may want to attend such a religiously elite institution.  However, it is sheer hypocrisy to ridicule the school for insisting that those who attend that school unfailingly adhere to the religious rules of the school, when those rules are made unequivocally clear from the start—indeed, each student must sign a document indicating that she or he understands and accepts the rules.

Moreover, it is a rejection of the very idea of individual responsibility to maintain that Tyler Frost had a right to ignore the rules of Heritage High because he found the rules are silly and no one should be held to rules deemed silly even if the individual signed up for them. 

It is characteristic of the hypocrisy of the liberal media to want to criticize the Heritage Christian School, although we can find also sorts of utterly foolish behavior in Hollywood about which the liberal media has very little that is critical to say.  This is disgusting. 

Tyler Frost and his girlfriend were invited to New York to do a TV interview.  Make no mistake about it.  The issue was not “Why is it, Mr. Frost, that you were not man enough to live up to the commitment that you voluntarily signed up for?”  The worry was not about his betrayal of that to which he voluntarily committed himself.  The focus was about how hurt he has been and how wrong it was for the Heritage Christian School to feel that it could imposed its values upon “such a nice young man” even when he is not on the school’s premises.  Then we wonder what happened to responsibility on the part of the young.  The answer is simple enough: Responsibility does not make for good news; whereas irresponsibility does.

Let me conclude by reminding the reader that I do not for a moment share the views about dancing that the Heritage Christian School holds.  One does not need to share the school’s views about dancing in order to see that the school is absolutely right in expecting Frost to live up to his commitment to abide by those rules.  Frost gets to finish high school and so obtain his diploma.  The suspension simply made it impossible to participate in the graduation ceremonies. 

Once more: Frost’s stepfather is a morally bankrupt individual if thinks that legal recourse is warranted.  And if any court should dare rule in Frost’s favor, then it is time for another American Revolution.