Student Gossip Sites

An Anonymous Coward writes: "The Standard has a brief article on student Web sites and the schools that try to shut them down. The good news: it appears students prevail in court most of time." No kidding. Students have rights too.

Comments

Ah, high school.

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

The thing about a gossip website is that it's so... detached.

The traditional "underground" newspaper has a tactile, in your face, get suspended and tell the tale while on your sponsored vacation feel to it.

Unless it's aggressively marketed, this sort of thing usually doesn't get far... of course, it usually means you're the first to get called to the administrative office when some Columbine-ish thing happens five states away.

One of the few lovely things about high school is that you get a beautiful concentration of petty tyrants and no accountability on your nose-tweaking. It's this combination that's gotten many a person through to his graduation day.

--Perianwyr Stormcrow

Difference between on-campus and off- publication

[Masem]

The article refers to a significant SC ruling that schools can censor student-run newspapers that include, at some point, school resources. So the school newspaper, or a underground paper printed off site but distributed strictly in school, would fall under this ruling. However, here we are talking about web pages and such that are, for the most part, run off ISPs not related to the school, and can be accessed by anyone. These sites, since the school has no control of any part of the distribution, should be free of this SC decision, and as the article points out, this is pretty much been true. On the other hand, if the school provides student home pages, and one student uses it to have disfavorable gossip about the school, I do think the school has a right to step in and censor it, under this ruling.