Introduction

In Bay City High School’s elective Say No to Drugs course, students were trained by a team of teachers to become peer educators, writing and performing anti-drug skits at local schools. Some students, however, who were taking the course not out of interest but because it seemed easy, were quite forthright about their own use of drugs, specifically marijuana. As the class prepared to perform before an audience for the first time, several students asked a white middle-aged female teacher, Priscilla, what they should say if audience members wanted to know whether they themselves smoked marijuana. Priscilla recommended that they say they did not, admonishing them, “Remember, you’re role models.”

This advice elicited a reproving response from Al Capone, a European American junior. “You want us to lie?”