Everybody in the U.S. is protected by the First Amendment and its guarantee of free speech. But recent events have raised the question of whether or not a person should say something, even though they can.

In late November, Shawnee Mission East High School senior Emma Sullivan took a field trip to Topeka to listen to Gov. Sam Brownback speak. Even though she had never actually spoken to Brownback, Sullivan later tweeted, “just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot.”

One of Brownback’s staff members saw the message and immediately contacted her school’s principal, who requested that she apologize. Sullivan did not do so, although Brownback did on behalf of his staff, as did the school district. It wasn’t long before the incident became national news and the number of followers Sullivan had on Twitter jumped from under 100 to over 15,000. Despite her gaining popularity, Sullivan has declined to do further interviews on the incident.

Due to all of this, debates have sparked nationwide about whether or not Sullivan should have said what she did.

“When you live in a free society then sometimes you have to tolerate comments you don’t like,” social studies teacher Chris Dunback said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s appropriate. We have the power to say some of these things and the protection to say some of these things but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should.”

University of Kansas political science professor Donald Haider-Markel agrees.

“She has every right to tweet what she wants as does anyone; but anyone should also realize this is public social media and there are consequences to any type of speech, legal or not,” Haider-Markel said via email. “It was still a silly tweet—if she doesn’t like him then she should have something specific to complain about.”

In the debate, the question of whether or not comments like this are in good taste has also arisen. This has caused issues because some people decide whether or not they will say something based on if it is in good taste or not.

“I guess it’s not [in good taste] because it’s on the Internet and everybody can see it,” sophomore Jessie Roach said. “There’s no law that says you can’t say something negative about somebody just because they’re a public official or they’re somebody famous.”

However, Haider-Markel disagrees with what speech in good taste means, saying that it cannot be defined because it is “time and culturally bound.” This belief is one of the major causes of whether or not something should be said because there are too many different views on what is or is not in good taste. Despite this, Haider-Markel went on to say that “as a free speech issue that doesn’t matter.”

Even if something is not in good taste, some people feel that unless a solution is offered then the initial insult is pointless.

“I’m a firm believer that insults are useless,” Dunback said. “I don’t think they accomplish anything. An insult seems to be baseless…in her tweet she didn’t say why he sucked.”

Haider-Markel now believes that the incredible response to Sullivan and the high amount of followers on Twitter is either about what we are allowed to say or how some view the government’s interference on matters such as this.

“I think it was largely a response to support free speech,” he said. “I’m sure some responded simply because they perceived an overreaction by the Brownback administration.”

Dunback also has an idea of why people may misconstrue the meanings of messages such as this, stating that because of who a message comes from, people may perceive the wrong idea about what is being said.

“Whatever your speech is, there are two things that come across: the message and the messenger,” Dunback said. “A lot of the time the message can be corrupted because the messenger is not heard or respected and vice versa. In a way, I judged the message and the messenger.”

While some people may think that lone complaints or insults will not solve anything, the argument over whether free speech should or should not be limited in cases such as this shows no signs of dying. But between Dunback, Roach and Haider-Markel, the answer is unanimous: it should not.