"At worst, justifiably killed, and at best, a thug."

Oops:

17-year-old [Michael Moroz], a senior at Central High School, recently wrote an opinion piece for the school’s newspaper criticizing protests by student racial-justice activists at the University of Missouri. It ran alongside a piece that applauded the demonstrations.
Moroz pulled no punches, calling Michael Brown, the black teenager killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., “a delinquent” who was “at worst, justifiably killed, and at best, a thug.” Moroz dismissed Missouri students’ demands as “nonsensical,” and blasted protesters who went on a hunger strike.Things blew up once the story hit the Centralizer’s Facebook page shortly after Philadelphia schools let out for winter break. On social media, there were calls to “deal with” Moroz and “shoot” him, and he was decried as a racist. Fearing for his safety, Moroz did not attend school Monday.

So, quick responses:

1. Nobody deserves to be sent death threats over exercised free speech, certainly not over a newspaper editorial.

2. Even if said newspaper editorial was garbage.

3. I do not look forward to all of the ammunition this is going to give concern trolls who will point to this as examples of liberals gone wild, instead of high school students being swept up in a moment of anger on the Internet, as high school students (and grown adults on both ends of the political spectrum) are wont to do.

4. On the question of censorship and free speech, opinions differ. Moroz argues that the school shouldn't have pulled the editorial; the school points out that they didn't take it offline or collect print editions of the paper (the article is easily found with a well-directed search). Given the primary need to protect students, my instinct is to sympathize with the school's position in all of this, although the student body differs in their opinion. Several students note both the article's inflammatory language and their wish for more open dialogue and acknowledgement of the pain this incident may have caused students:

“He can have a different viewpoint,” said Gaillard, 17. “But he didn’t have to be crass and disrespectful in the way he expressed it. That was unacceptable.” 

Ana Deluca-Mayne, another Central senior, said she wished the story had not been published — not because of its view but because of its “extremely inflammatory language” and its seeming dismissal of the Black Lives Matter movement. She said she was disappointed it wasn’t used to spur a larger conversation.
“A lot of the people who were upset with the article were upset that it was taken down,” [Ann] Deluca-Mayne said. “We want to have discussions about race, about differing opinions about movements like Black Lives Matter.”
She and others said any threat to Moroz was unacceptable. 

“Disgust” was how Central senior Tiffany Coles described her reaction to the story...but she also takes issue with the administration’s response.
“So many students were upset, and hurt, and felt personally attacked by this article,” Coles said. “That should have been addressed. That shouldn’t have been swept under the rug.”

Yeah, nobody comes out looking very good in all of this, but from the perspective of an observer, it hurts to think of what lessons the students are taking away from all of this.