Slashdot Mirror
Student Web-Site Censors Stung for $62,000
Pru points to this CNET story, writing that "[Karl Beidler, a] teenager who was suspended from high school for building a Web page mocking his assistant principal has won $10,000 in damages." This was covered on politech last week as well, for the brave. Plus, the North Thurston School District (Washington state) has to pay up to the ACLU $52,000 in attorney fees, too. That's quite a disincentive for other schools to clamp down on parody sites.
What if this kid ran off a ton of photocopies of this same parody in the form of a newsletter? Would anyone be complaining if they clamped down on this aspect of freedom of expression?
Part of me thinks there wouldn't have been a problem, because somehow handing out pamphlets making fun of the principal within the school itself is seen as more of an attack on the principal's authority. But since it's online it's "discrete" and should be left alone? I don't know...
It seems odd to me, because I think at this point in history we're sometimes MORE sensitive about online censorship rights than hardcopy freedom of speech.
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I wonder where they got the nerve to even suspend the kid. He has freedom of speech too! Heaven forbid I mock my college president on a website and I get called up to his office and find out I'm expelled. I don't think 10,000 would be enough though for that kind of shit. Its not as if the kid made any threats, he only did a paraody. Granted, if he did it with his school's ISP, (if they have one) then they COULD say something, and only then in the TOS, but that still would be pushing it "I feel an evil presence Could it be... yes, it is! A RIAA Lawyer!"
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
>Wasn't the Constitution and Declaration written by people the British would considered "jerks"?
;-)
Nah, we just consider them "ungrateful"
Ok, so this is a little off topic but at least it will get posted! (somewhere:)
I've given a few lessons to teenagers and it's not easy - primarily, their disrespect of you comes not from any personal dislike for you as a person, or for the content of the lesson, but because if they show you disrespect in a public and obvious way, it makes them look cool in the eyes of their peers.
Most of the disruptive kids in a classroom are actually quite easy to get on with outside of it - it's only when they have an audience of peers that they become insufferable.
Now I don't know if this is the case here, but if the kid said a whole load of offensive things about a member of staff to look cool to his peers, and then that member of staff suffered some harm or other (however you care to define it) as a consequence, then reinforcing the child's behaviour isn't solving any problems, nor is it "standing up for constitutional rights". Perhaps the punishment was too severe, then the teacher ought to be put right, but you don't reward this kind of behaviour unless you want to see it again and again.
In my scenario the kid wasn't "exercising a constitutional freedom" as far as he was concerned. He was making himself look good at someone else's expense - a behaviour common in children that we ought to encourage them grow out of.
I'm not saying there's a miscarriage of justice here - I don't know enough about the facts, but the above is an argument that seemed to be missing from the discussion so far. The devil is in the detail (yes, I know, and my high school maths teacher - probably).
Salocin.com
Whatever gave you the idea that schools were democratic? The country might be a democracy, but that does no mean all the institutions within it need to be.
;) ?
What are ya...a liberal
Sorry...rebellion against a high school by kids shouldn't be tolerated. Feel free to disagree, but the kids have no say. Once again, that is why they have parents.
But off-campus speech is another issue altogether. It cannot be argued that off-campus speech is disrupting class, and therefore off-campus speech does not fall under the "cannot shout 'fire' in a crowded theator" exception to the 1st Amendment. The school's mistake was for suspending him for off-campus (protected) speech, rather than for speech he did on-campus.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I think that you ARE missing a point. The website is not being distributed AT the school. It would be akin to you passing out a pamphlet somewhere off school grounds, in your own time, and one of these pamphlets landing in the hands of someone at school. The fact that it's accessible at school means NOTHING. It was not created or distributed at school, during school hours by the student. As far as standing just outside school grounds and shouting? Sure, as long as it isn't against the law (is this person truant? blocking traffic?) why not? People are allowed to protest. The principle could call the police I suppose, but to suspend the student for voicing an opinion outside of school? The PARENTS should punish the student if they have done something wrong. The job of the principle is not to monitor what students actions are outside of school activities.
BAM!
It sounds to me like you should go to the department head and/or the Principal of the school and complain.
Assuming that the test was longer than just a few questions, curved, or the weighting of teh questions wasn't abnormally heavy towards the top question, there's no way that missing ONE question should land you a D-.
PLUS -- if you backed your arguments logically and factually, the teacher probably should not have even docked you for the question!
FYI: I had an experience like this in college, and by going up the ladder was able to make my case & prevail.
Scott
While I'm glad to see that Free speech wins again,
You have to admit that there is a double standard here.
If the principle were to make his own website
attacking the credibility of the student,
The shit would definitely hit the fan.
I probably would have done the same thing when I was a kid (had there been an internet), but if I were in the principle's shoes, I'm not sure what I'd do. What would you do? What is the correct thing for a principle to do in that situation?
I'm sorry, but this just looks to me like a rant from an inexperienced teacher. I didn't like school, but I remember it well enough. The exact same kids who caused all kinds of trouble in one class would be fine in others.
Why?
Because the teachers are different. There are teachers who let students get away with anything, and the students took advantage of it. Then there were teachers who would try to use peer pressure "ok because John can't control himself, you all have an extra page of homework tonight"- John doesn't care, he wasn't planning on doing the homework anyway. The teachers who followed the rules to the letter are the ones who handled the problem kids the best. You cause a disruption, you get 1 warning, then suspension- or whatever the school's system was.
I believe I was very close to being a "problem kid", but I wasn't, mainly because I was too shy to talk in class. I believe the REAL problem is with the teaching system- not everyone learns the same way. I don't learn a damn thing from homework. I fall asleep during lectures. However, if I get interested in something I can pick it up in five minutes- and then go on and teach the people around me how to do it (kinda how highschool Physics class was).
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
What he means is that your argument is that protesting what he felt was injustice from his principal was not in the spirit of the Constitution, but that very Constitution was protesting what the colonists thought was injustice from the British. You think the kid was out of line, the British thought the colonists were out of line. So it's ironic you don't think the kid's protest was "in the spirit" of the Constitution when the Constitution's spirit is and always has been about freedom of speech and expression, and the right to protest injustice.
"Maybe for once in my life people will call me 'sir' without adding 'you're making a scene'." -Homer Simpson
To a certain extent schools act 'in loco parentis' -- but only while the student is on campus or attending a school function. The courts have long held that students do not lose their 1st Amendment rights just because they are students. The only time schools are allowed to step in is when the student's ON-CAMPUS speech is disrupting the school. What the student says off-campus is none of the school's business.
And oh -- I've been a teacher. I've also hung out with school attendance officers (the people who conduct disciplinary hearings). I've seen how students disrespect teachers and administrators. But if it happens off campus, it's not the school's business. I had plenty to handle on-campus without going out of my way to look for trouble off-campus.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Wow, I guess proferring a geniunely held opinion that is far enough outside accepted slashdot dogma consitutes trolling. Apparently some of the moderators agree with you.
Free speech in action folks.
-josh
Was the web site downloadable on school PCs?
If it was, that's a proxy situation, Not a violation by the student. We could turn this into a "these 3 sites are legal" argument, but if its on the internet, its visible unless its censored.
Something similar happened to me in high school. I was suspended for 10 days for running a teacher quotes website. The quotes were submitted by students, and posted on the website.
I appealed the suspension decision with the help of a lawyer and the suport of all the other students involved (and their parents) and it was approved. That didn't give me back my 10 days though.
Also, I was the only one who got in any sort of trouble, many students, including myself are still bitter over that fact.
Too bad I didn't try to sue them.. I could have paid for university. Oh well.. damn school.
--- Mike Kolcun
What I consider important, and all that I consider important, is that this kid did what he did on his own time and without school resources. Was it immature? Yes. Should he have done it? Probably not. Does the school have the right to restrict it's students right to free speech when they're not even in school? ABSOLUTELY NOT! And I find it difficult to believe that there are people here who would think the school has that right. Basically the kid got suspended because the principal didn't like his webpage (and rightly so, it was mocking him), but what if the kid was advocating the Democratic party, and the principal is a Republican? Could he be suspended for advocating an opinion the principal deemed offensive? I doubt THAT would happen, but the hyperbole helps us see how assinine this really is.
"Maybe for once in my life people will call me 'sir' without adding 'you're making a scene'." -Homer Simpson
Heh. As we know, moderators will agree with just about anything, including goatse.cx and base ownership...
Is this your "genuinely held opinion" - that the student should be punished for off-campus behavior, rather than the school buying a clue and segregating its virtual space the same way it segregates its physical space?
If so, how do you figure? Or do you rather find my interpretation of your statements to be inaccurate, and my own opinion to be thoroughly wrong and trollesque?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
If the student's *ON CAMPUS* behavior was disrupting class, if, for example, the kid was going around saying "look at this neat URL!" and kids were giggling and dusrupting class, that's one thing. No student has the right to interfere with the education of another. If documented, this would have sufficed to uphold the suspension. But what the kid does on his spare time is his own business. I did not see it as my job to regulate what the student did on his own time, I had enough work regulating what the kid did on my time. It is a shame that this vice principal was so anal that he did a knee-jerk dumb thing and cited the kid for off-campus behavior, especially when with a little more work he could have probably found on-campus behavior to cite the kid for (I'm sure that the kid was spreading the nasty URL around campus, for example -- and what students do on-campus *IS* the school's business).
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Also, I believe teachers get PAID to deal with students? I have to deal with rude customers each and every day in my job. Am I sayin the students are OK for doing this? NO, but I am saying it's part of the job, but you seem to have the right understanding... I wish there were more "Good" teachers out there... unfortunately most of them out there are just looking forward to 10 year.
Some schools have a "conduct unbecoming a student of *schoolname*" policy.
Basically, if you do something that the school doesn't think one its students should do, they have a right to punish you. It doesn't matter whether it's in school or not.
Also, you'll be happy to note that in Canada, our Supreme Court has ruled that students in school have no right to privacy, nor do they have unrestricted free speech. Just like you have no right to privacy or free speech in your own home if your parents so choose.
Its not parody site which directly leads to you getting money. Its you doing a parody site then university professor failing you on an essay on "the rise and fall of the british empire" because of the parody site.
You can read other people's comments which would explain it better.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Perhaps you are right on this...
However, we are talking about the use and abuse of the constitution here, not the opinion of the British. I am not sure how this is relevant to the discussion...
Unfortunately, as others have pointed out, the ones paying are actually the other students. The payment is coming from the school district's funds, which - presumably - would otherwise be spend on the kids.
It's too bad that the distict was liable. Better to sue the actual fools that committed the offense.
With respect to this being a "dog bites man" story, I opine that the current climate is very much against online rights and protections. A court finding *for* speech rights online is worthy news indeed.
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
Rebellion by kids against the school could actually be okay, if they went about it in a respectful, adult manner and not like kids lashing out thoughtlessly.
If this kid had a problem with one of the administrators, he could have written a letter to the schoolboard, attended meetings, and spoken his peace. Instead he made the guy look like a pedophile (sp?) on a website. Not right, and he should be taught that. Certainly by his parents, if not by someone else.
Having the right to free speech is deserves as much respect as any establishment/institution in this country. It IS an institution. People get censored because they choose to use this right in an abusive manner. There is always a way to say what you want without defacing someone or doing something offensive.
And tell me, why is it different for the kid to do what he did and get suspended, or for me to tell a female coworker that I like the way her butt looks in those pants? How free should free speech be? Do you advocate sexual harrassment? Where's the line?
Well I am a university student. Thus I can make a parady site about one of my professors... he he .. I get thousands of $$$...
I don't think this should be so easy. Maybe someone can explain it to me. I feel like missing some points...
Sorry...rebellion against a high school by kids shouldn't be tolerated. Feel free to disagree, but the kids have no say. Once again, that is why they have parents.
Just like rebellion against a government by citizens should not be tolerated.
You have no say, that is why we have senators, representatives, and all the other breeds of bureaucrat.
They speak for you so you don't have to.
I'm not saying that high school kids *should* rebel, just that by
'programming' them into complacent adults that bend over for whatever authority figure that happens by is not a good thing.
(Unless you happen to be the one in power...)
Our culture has been stagnating for years, partly because of people like you.
But all that is beside the point, anyway-
This kid never rebelled against the school he rebelled against an administrator.
He wasn't disrupting classes, threatening demonstrations, pasting up propaganda or dropping leaflets.
He just put up a web page lampooning a single person.
That person then abused his power by using governmental authority to silence a personal attack,
instead of getting a cease-and-desist order, or filing a civil suit,
like any other citizen not in authority would do.
The abuse of power is what's at issue here, not rebellion in schools.
I think they should fire the administrator.
RG
----
Deepthroat my submarine, swallow my seamen.
I would think that there's some sort of insurance policy the district would have to payout for any lost lawsuits, especially in this age of "i slipped cause i didn't read the sign so now i'm gonna sue".
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
I don't have the time to run a search on this, but it was posted a while ago. Student recieved $10,000 the rest went to the lawyers
There are certain reasons for the cops coming: ie: distrubing the peace, which have been backed up in courts, its also common sense too. Now tell me,does it say anywhere that this boy caused a ruckus at school, destroyed the power structure, (which in academia we all know, is through the jocks, backed up by the adminstration)? I haven't caused a ruckus at school, yet.., but I know for a fact we have a pretty free wheeling press here..in fact the president is paraodied and caricurized almost daily in our newspapers..and it doesn't cause any problems in the school, just venting out our opinion as we are enititled to... Please think through your opinions...you sound and look as foolish as Microsoft when they declared open-source unAmerican.
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
It seems to me the idiots whom were actually involved in the suspension should take a paycut to cover the cost of their stupidity/mistake/overzealousness. That way, those who were stupid pay, the rest of the students get the same education, and everything os koscher. No hard feelings, right? heh.
Failure is not an option.
No offense, but that was a pretty foolish question. If the Supreme Court says "the Constitution grants no rights" (Cruickshank is the first cite I can find), then that's a pretty clear indicator that free speech isn't guaranteed to citizens in law.
:)
I still don't buy it. The Supreme Court says "the Constitution grants no rights". Agreed. The Constitution is not the source of our rights. However, I say the Constitution protects all rights. Protecting rights and granting them are not the same thing. This is why I say that the comment "free speech is guaranteed to citizens in law" is not false. It simply describes the purpose of our law: to protect (i.e. guarantee) our natural rights.
Consider, in the absense of law, are your rights guaranteed? What does it mean to have rights if you cannot exercise them? You may have natural rights, but many people would be happy to take yours from you. Thus, we need a society with laws to protect those rights, thereby guaranteeing (for the most part) to each of us our ability to exercise them.
No offense taken, since I don't think it was a foolish question to begin with.
They do...they get 84%. Which is actually what they usually get if i remember correctly.
Anyway, its nice to see that the courts still know that censorship is unconstitional. Hopefully we will see more rulings like this.
What if you are telling other kids about the website AT school? If I'm sitting in teh computer lab and tell a bunch f kids the url and they go to it, isn't that distributing the website at school?= \=\=\=\=\
=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\
Freedom of speech 0 Censorship 1
Concidering that the website was not made on school grounds, perhaps the question should be: "What if the pamphlets had been handed just outside of school property?"
However, concidering that the school has access to the internet, and therefore any student could go to this website while in the school (until it was blocked that is). Maybe handing out pamphlets in the halls until they were draged by the ear to the Assistant Principal's office is analgous after all...
Fuzzy Knights: New RPG Strips Tuesday and Friday!:
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I was just looking to see what people were thinking. Sorry for the rant. Had some idiot kid bring a gun to the school once and there parents were complete A-HOLES about the entire thing. I hope you never know the look on your own kids face when they are happy in your own arms knowing that dads' protected them.
The point I was mostly interested was in the Hit List and bomb making. I think making / publishing a hit list is legal, or the idea of a target page is legal. ( not that I like it but we must protect freedom's, I don't want to be the last one to say "not my problem" ). It's just that PARODY is a protected form of free speach, but sometime the target has no form of protection. I understand that it is not Illegal when it's off school grounds. That's fine. I'm more interested in the moral veiws & long term effects of the action.
I see that this situation ( homer / VP ) had no out right solution. The only solution was that the VP to ask the parents to speak to thier kid. If the VP was an a-hole, then he could of went in the "abuse of power mode" where the VP ask all the teachers to do him a favor and start making that kids life tough. Payback would have been a bitch to that kid, but it would have saved the school (if no one was caught ) their money.
again sorry for the rant ( but it sure felt good )
Onepoint
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the pricipal probably had grounds for legal action as an individual. But as long as the student isn't disrupting school, there is no reason to kick him out.
But that's my contention. This *is* disrupting school. Things like this are disruptive of public education. Even if they take place off campus.
Comparison: suppose the kid had got on television and published this stuff? Or a newspaper? This is tantamount to telling the stuff to the principals face, in public. What does one do then?
Or, put another way, how is this different from you creating a website making fun of the President of the U.S.?What gives you the right to abuse federal employees? Why shouldn't George W. have you kicked out of the country? Do you expect him to go on paying your social security benefits with a smile?
I was afraid someone would bring this up. I don't have a ready answer. I think there's some difference between the two situations, but can't articulate what it is yet. Then again, you could argue that most politcal campaigns are pretty much this sort of behavior at a slightly higher level.
The problem that I want to solve is: public disrespect (especially in such a degrading manner) of authority figures undermines their authority at school. Undermined authority makes education harder. What do you do about the problem?
--
Tweet, tweet.
Undoubtedly the kid was going around school telling kids "hey, look at this neat URL!" and getting kids giggling and disruptive. If so, cite him for that on-campus behavior. Don't try to cite him for off-campus behavior, because schools only have authority to regulate speech or behavior that directly disrupts class (courts have ruled that students do NOT leave their 1st Amendment rights at the schoolhouse door, but they cannot disrupt class with their speech), and speech that's off-campus by definition cannot disrupt class.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Schools have no business regulating off-campus speech, because off-campus speech by definition cannot disrupt. Only on-campus behavior can disrupt. So if the kid was spreading the URL around campus, yeah, you can suspend him -- for that on-campus behavior. But that's not what they did to him.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Really? How is this situation any different from you, say, creating a rude website that mocks and degrades a local merchant because of his racial background... and then show up at his store, expecting the man you just maligned to serve you with a smile?
The owner of a private business has the right to refuse serivice to anyone, unless it was for one of the protected discrimination categories. I.e. he can keep out someone he's had a personal issues with, but not all people of a particular color.
You'd get yourself thrown out of the store, and perhaps arrested if you persisted.
Yes, it's called trespassing.
Same situation here. What makes this case different - the fact that this is a public institution?
Yup.
Why should that give you, or anyone else, the right to abuse the employees and expect them to simply take it and continue to provide you with whatever services you demand?
Because they don't own the school, the taxpayers do. And who said anyone had the right to abuse the employees? As I said, the pricipal probably had grounds for legal action as an individual. But as long as the student isn't disrupting school, there is no reason to kick him out.
Or, put another way, how is this different from you creating a website making fun of the President of the U.S.? What gives you the right to abuse federal employees? Why shouldn't George W. have you kicked out of the country? Do you expect him to go on paying your social security benefits with a smile?
Quite simple. The player signs a contract with the club and the club signs a contract with the organisation running the competition, or something similar.
The organisation can choose to place any requirement within the contract, provided its legal. Its up to the player to decide whether the money/fame/fortune is worth the restrictions on his/her social life.
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yvan eht nioj
Je t'aime Stéphanie
Well, that may be their motto, but I'm afraid that they often end up stomping other people's civil liberties in the process. Thereby using the 'ends justifies the means' mindset. Besides, this is setting a dangerous precedent: You cannot question a student's motives or discipline him/her for questionable actions when it comes to his 'free speech'. Ask the kids from Columbine, and I'm sure they would have a different opinion on how far 'free speech' should go. Free doesn't come without responsibility for your actions.
This is no different than if the student had paid to have an ad published in the local weekly 'Free Shopper Ad Paper'.
If he had bought an ad in a traditional print-on-dead-trees publication, and other students had brought copies of that ad to the school and shown them around, would he have been suspended?
Just because the internet makes the 'printing press' nearly free, does not always mean that we should ignore two hundred years of laws relating to old school publishing.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I thought lawyers got a % of the award, normally. I guess I'm in the wrong kind of work.
Why is it that athletes get suspended from playing if they drink outside of school? Because it's illegal for people under 21 to drink in the US. Also, playing sports is a voluntary, extra-curricular activity. Athletes sign an agreement to avoid drugs and alcohol. If they break their agreement, they lose the right to play.
By contrast, it is not illegal to write/publish/speak a parody, especially of a public figure.
cheers, joshua
Terradot
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
Frankly, as a former school teacher, I find your attitude to be rather disgusting. The Constitution did not become toilet paper just because a vice principal's feelings were hurt.
I don't beleive I'm advocating wiping (or wiping with) and consitutional clause. I haven't once said the student should in fact be censored. I've advocated the reverse -- let him keep his site. Let him publish anything he wants. What he loses is not even his educational priviliges (not guaranteed by the constituation, I beleieve, if it matters), but his privilege to attend the school which, by his own apparent admission, is run by questionable people anyway. Given that there are usually some good alternatives, it's not really such a punishment.
If the student's *ON CAMPUS* behavior was disrupting class, if, for example, the kid was going around saying"look at this neat URL!" and kids were giggling and dusrupting class, that's one thing....If documented, this would have sufficed to uphold the suspension.
I can't seem to find information about the case, so this is speculation, but: what's the most likely way that the principal found out about the site? Was he just on the net searching Altavista for his own name? Perhaps. But I think it's far more likely that some authority figure in the school found kids having exactly the kind of giggling/disrupting conversation you mention above, and they reported it to the principal. Or maybe they left it up in the browser window in the library. In any case, it seems unlikely to me that this came to the attention of the principal by any means other than "discussion" of the site on campus.
Furthermore, once the cat's out of the bag, it doesn't need any help to run around. The public challenge to authority has already been made. The principals alternatives would be:
1) back down. do nothing. hope this doesn't undermine authority at all (not so effective).
2) call parents (depending on parents, might work)
3) bar him from school, temporarily or permanently
4) sue for libel (more punitive than #3)
5) tit for tat. Principal puts up website saying student is the model for goatse.cx and hasn't had
a date in 3 years and all the cheerleaders think he's a loser, and the teachers hate him.
The only good options I see are 2 and 3.
But what the kid does on his spare time is his own business. I did not see it as my job to regulate what the student did on his own time, I had enough work regulating what the kid did on my time.
Again, I don't know how the principal would even have known what the students did on their own time -- Heaven knows I didn't -- unless it somehow did touch the school. The fact that the principal -- often the last person to know about such things -- knew means that it had probably already touched the school.
--
Tweet, tweet.
He published it in a format that was available to students on school property. I see no functional difference between this and a paper pamphlet. Please enlightment me.
The difference is a website is in public domain. A pamphlet is not. Yes, a student could have accessed it from the computer lab I suppose. They could also access it from home, as could you or I. By that reasoning, can I sue every website that has obcenity/pornography/violence/racisism for publishing material that could potentially slip by filtering software and be viewed by some student in a school lab? If so, I'd better have kids now so I can cash in. The only issue here was the principals pride.
On the brighter side, I think this was a wonderful education for the students there on how effective the Constitution is. It clearly demonstrated that 225 years later, our rights to free speech are still protected, and I hope that all of the history teachers there have a class on how Big Brother got screwed out of $60,000 for trying to abuse their power.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
Yes, they have rights. Just as we have the right to tell them to fuck off and ignore them. They don't have the right to impose their views on us. These people are in authority only because we allow them to have authority. Ignore them and laugh at them and they will lose their authority.
I say fuck `em, one and all
Another day closer to redwood heaven
"I mean, say what you want about the tenets of national socialism... at least it's an ethos."
--Walter Sobchak
But I agree that it's a shame that a jackass move by school administration only ends up costing the taxpayer.
--
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Hard to believe that this is even a story. A student gets suspended for doing something on his own time out of school? Give me a break! Glad to see they had to pay out for constitutional rights violations!
---
The (Hopefully) Great Slashdot Blackout
So the ACLU is now defending high school bullies and punks? Great, next thing you know, all the geeks of the world will be forced to give up their milk to the bully 'cause the ACLU 'sued geeks for non-harmonious tolerance of socially disfunctional punks!'
Yes, schools do overreact to many things. They over react to a kid having 2 chewable aspirins in his or her lunchbox. They overreact to a kid showing off his new Swiss Army knife. They overreact to people wearing stuff they don't like.
However, in this case there is clear evidence of a student disrespecting the establishment and taking action to undermine the credibility of one of the school's administrators. Whether peopel want to admit it or not, these schools need these people, and for the most part they are getting the best people they can.
Perhaps a month was excessive...I would agree with that. But, these kids are in school to learn what the school has to teach them, not to change the rules of the school. It isn't their place to do so. They are minors and generally speaking not taxpayers. They have parents to speak out for them, if the parents deem it necessary.
Also, there are ways to stand up for what's right. Who is going to say that this kid chose a path any where near the right one?
*Ha* *Ha*
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I'm afraid not, what about when the teachers go to the local pub or what not and bitch about those damn kids, and certain kids in particular.
The fact that it was accessible from the school PC's doesn't matter. He should have had the sys-admin block the site then. (still a violation of 1st amend rights but doubt it would have gotten the school system as bad as it did.)
His freedom was violated because he was blocked from continuing his education due to something he said. And with regards to the job environment, that is a private industry, not a government run institution. The asst. principle would have had less problems if they were in a private school setting.
It's not slander or libel unless it can be proved the content was purposefully meant to be misconstrued as the truth. In this case it was obviously a parody. Good thing we don't go by your version of what is "mean and wrong". I still appreciate the fact that I can speak freely without being punished.
Bad news though: according to today's Times you'll see more of these .. an advertising trade group is standardizing on them.
sulli
RTFJ.
What rule of a school, ANY SCHOOL, controls what a student says with his own computer, on his own webserver, on his own time, from his own home? You must have a pretty strange idea of how far the authority of a school extends.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Was the web site downloadable on school PCs? If so, this is no different than a student being suspended for distributing an obscene parody pamphlet, or running down the halls yelling obscene things about the assistant principle. Whether the site was downloadable on school PCs is irrelevant, because the speech was done publically and not through a school channel. Distributing an "obscene parody pamphlet" or "running down the halls yelling obscene things about the assistant principle" would get a student punished for violating school rules and disrupting school, but the key difference is that those are actions done while within the school building.
The boy's freedom of speech was clearly violated. As I said earlier, censoring and punishing free speech are more or less equivalent.
You miss the key difference, which is that the employer is a business, while the school is a government-run institution. Businesses are not bound by the first amendment, while government is.
------------------
A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
First, if you parody your employer, they can fire you because the Constitution doesn't bind private parties. It does bind the government. That's because they work for us. We don't work for them. And what's this about the website being accessible from school? All websites are accessible from anywhere unless they're blocked. Big deal. Finally, I think this post misses the important privacy issue. The kid did what he did on his own time. Have we forgotten that there *is* such a thing as our own time? Or is all our time the property of our employers and of the government now? If it is, I want some goddamn overtime checks.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
Um, parody?
- I'm all for letting any student exercise their right to publish and have free speech until they're blue in the face. But if they do it, they should be prepared to give up attending the school they're badmouthing.
You don't have the first clue about free speech, do you?- I'm all for letting any citizen exercise their right to publish and have free speech until they're blue in the face. But if they do it, they should be prepared to give up freedom in the country they're badmouthing.
Sounds just as reasonable, doesn't it?Yeah, maybe I'm being a little unfair, there are things we obviously can't allow in school because they cause a disruption. But like it or not, what happened here did not happen at school any more than badmouthing the principle orally on the weekend. Are we going to start suspending students for doing that?
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
It appears to me that the issue at hand was that the kid insulted the Assistant Principal on his own time and with his own money, and the AP used his power as an administrator of the school to suspend the kid. I think the real situation was that the AP didn't like what the kid had to say in an independent forum, and subsequently kicked him out of school.
I'm usually a stickler for details, and I'd like to see where in the local school system's student handbook that you can't build parody websites about school admins. Show me that and I'll change my tune.
If you let them get out of hand, you start losing part of the rest of the 80-90%. And one of the ways to let things get out of hand is allowing disrespect of others (students) or authority figures.
This is equivelent to saying that posting naked pictures of the president is grounds for jail time since it de-moralizes 80-90% of the citizens that like the president. I KNOW that can't be legal. And I KNOW you couldn't advocate such a speech policy. So why should it apply to schools?
Free education isn't an unalienable right; it's probably a privilege more on order with a driver's license
If it's such a privilege, why do those 10-20% not want to be there? Because, if they are under 18, it's the law to go. They HAVE to go. They have the right to not WANT to be there, don't they? Obviously they do! Just like you would have the right to not LIKE a law that was enacted that governs you. Teachers can't regulate how someone feels! So why shouldn't students have the right to say what they are feeling without fear of punishment?? Any attempts to restrict speech like that are repressive actions and should be CRITICIZED by educators. Educators should ENCOURAGE free speech (albeit in a different medium than this kid used but you get my point) rather than punish for it. Teachers should want to foster creativity instead of regulate it just because they don't like it or because they think it's 'bad for morale'
>Maybe the kid should be made to memorize the Declaration of Independance
I'm not an American, but I thought the Declaration of Independance was there, partially, to protect the people from Governmental tyranny (and to separate America from the UK)?
Most school kids don't deal with the same government you and I do. They deal with the "school administration" government.
How would you like it if your government put you under house arrest for expelling some nasty diatribe against Bush on the internet?
I guess you'd say to yourself that you need to respect the government more; They are not your equals, they are your superiors and therefore everything they say and do is right and if you don't do it then you are an evil person that belongs in jail. You'd just tuck tail and never complain about your government again. All heil leader Bush for he does no wrong! Right?
Rush Limbaugh probably deserves to be sent to live in another country for his crimes of speech against his government. Right?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Shya. Instead of being suspended for a couple of weeks, the principal would be canned.
Fair should be fair: kick the little shit-disturber out of that school *permanently*.
Teach some hard facts about life. Like, if you put up a fake picture of your boss fucking the dog, he's probably gonna fire you. If you put up a fake picture of your wife shaggin' the dog, she's probably gonna divorce you. Put up a faked picture of your principal doing the bad, and he's gonna kick your ass right outta there.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Yes, this is my opinion, and I have explained it thoroughly in other posts. He published disruptive material that was accessible to students during school hours and using school equipment. School administrators have every right to punish dispruptive behavior that spills over on to their campus.
The fact that this kid's web server was not located at school has nothing to do with it. A student could (rightfully) be punished for distributing a pamphlet he photocopied at kinkos. Does the fact that he did not use school equipment or resource to create and distribute the pamphlet somehow absolve him?
For some reason, because the kid used the internet as a publishing mechanism the slashdot community seems to think his speech should be protected to some degree more than other disruptive speech that might take place on a school campus.
-josh
What if you are telling other kids about the website AT school? If I'm sitting in teh computer lab and tell a bunch f kids the url and they go to it, isn't that distributing the website at school? Well, yes, it would be. But he wasn't suspended for going around shouting a URL. He was suspended for having the website at all. It's been said in other posts, and I'll rehash it here: The principle should have done either a) Taken this as a personal assault, and go at this situatuon as a libel suit outside of the school. Or possibly b) gathered statements from teachers or students saying that yes, this kid was in fact passing out the URL in class and on school grounds, and then procede to suspend the student. I'm sure the kid probably went around spouting off the URL in school, and my first post didn't convey that. But this situation wasn't based on the student passing out a URL.
BAM!
I'm rather shocked to see so many people think that a governmental official abusing his power(yes, abusing his power. if this webpage were on the school server, or created at school, its not an abuse. out of school, it is an abuse) So, lets apply. Remember the GWB parody website Bush has been trying to repeatedly force down? How many of you think Bush should now be able to use his Presidential power to tell the webmaster to take the website down, or face deportation. I mean, what gives you the right to defame public officials?!? You don't HAVE to be here if you want free speech!!!
Sorry, but this whole reaction had me somewhat pissed, mainly cause the school I attend has tried this before and failed miserably.
Crow
Anyhow, probably a kid told a teacher about how so-and-so was saying he had a web site that slammed Mr. VP, and the teacher told Mr. VP, and Mr. Vice Principal blew a fuse.
There are kids who specialize in figuring out what will make teachers and administrators blow fuses. The trick to dealing with those kids is to go "by the book" -- dispassionately, documenting everything, making sure all the boxes are checked and all the A's covered in the CYA's. Blowing a fuse gets you sued. As happened here.
And oh, by the way, there is no such thing as a "challenge to authority", the moment you get into that zero-sum game, you (as a teacher or administrator) have lost. The only thing of interest is disruptions to the learning environment. "authority" is of use only insofar as it relates to handling disruptions of the learning environments. Teachers (and administrators) can no longer stand at the schoolhouse door and beat the sh*t out of any kid whose looks they don't like. There has to be an actual disruption first.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
The teacher took his teaching job knowing what the school's policy was. It was his choice to take the job (or leave it if he disagreed with that policy). But high-school students are required by law to attend school until a certain age. They aren't given some contract which they have the option of signing -- they are forced.
Errr. You have it mixed up.
You said:
"You can go here but you cannot have any bad opinions about it, and if you do, well god help you if you voice them in a way a teenager might."
He said (paraphrasing):
"You can voice any opinion you want in the way a teenager might, but if you do it rudely/disruptively, you can't go here."
So he's suggesting the reverse of what you thought.
--
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
While free speech is protected by the First Amendment, there must be drawn a limit to which this umbrella of protection is stopped. That limit is drawn where your speech (or in this case, writings) causes harm to another individual.
Parody and satire are expressly protected forms of speech. Unfortunately I can't point you to specific case law, but any lawyer worth his salt should be able to tell you that.
A philosopher once said "I may not agree with what you're saying, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" and this holds true in most cases. We have the First Amendment not to protect the conformists and conservatives in our society, but to protect those who hold minority or contriversial opinions that would otherwise be persecuted for their beliefs.
Oh, come on, people! Try applying that to the kid. It doesn't make any sense otherwise. The principal falls into that "conformists and conservatives" category you mentioned, while the kid is the one who's being persecuted. This is back-assward.
Oh, and I think it was Voltaire.
This is a good thing, and I fully support the student's right to exercise his rights, however in this particular case, the student has crossed the line, and was right to have his website censored by the school system. When speech causes harm, whether it be physical injuries, or mental anguish, to another person, the speaker has violated the rights of the target of the speech and therefore, not protected by the First Amendment.
No. No, no, no, no, no, no. I hope I'm making myself clear here. You're WRONG. Parody and satire are protected categories.
What do you mean, you "fully support the student's right to express his rights?" You quite obviously DON'T support that right, or you wouldn't be talking such nonsense. I believe that's called talking out of both sides of your mouth at once.
Specifically which of the Asst. Principal's rights was he violating?
This is called slander or libel and is punishable by law. Just ask the National Inquirer. Deliberately spreading rumors or insulting another person is against the law and I am truly saddened at the opressive power the ACLU wields over this country's courts. I can only hope that justice will be served in an appeal.
Wrong again. Insulting people isn't against the law. If it were, we'd have a REAL prison space problem on our hands. And as has been pointed out, it's the job of the law to deal with slander and libel, not school districts who want to throw their weight around. That's what we pay 'em for.
The ACLU has too much power? The hell you say! They don't have enough. I can't speak for you, but I'm not willing to trade away my constitutional rights for the sake of some assistant principal's dignity.
inigima
You don't have the first clue about free speech, do you?
Comments like this are the number 1 thing I hate about slashdot. It's impossible to have a discussion here without slinging insults.
If you disagree with something I say, try actually reasoning instead of asking logically empty and insulting rhetorical questions.
Yeah, maybe I'm being a little unfair
Way unfair. There's a large difference between barring a student from participating in a single educational institution and depriving them of the ability to move freely about, owning property, earning money, etc.
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Tweet, tweet.
So you believe that a school (a government agency, remember) has unlimited power to censor any expression they feel is disruptive. Suppose a student writes a letter to a newspaper supporting legalization of drugs? Supporting drug use is clearly disruptive to the educational process, better get rid of him.
Comparison: suppose the kid had got on television and published this stuff? Or a newspaper?
Then nothing, if it's done outside of school and does not constitute libel or slander. Refer again to the Bill of Rights.
The problem that I want to solve is: public disrespect (especially in such a degrading manner) of authority figures undermines their authority at school. Undermined authority makes education harder. What do you do about the problem?
Obviously, punish all who dare to express dissenting opinions. That's a surefire way to win the respect and admiration of your subjects. It's worked well in China...
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
So true! In way too many lawsuits, justice is being perverted as excessive sums are awarded for comparatively trivial transgressions. Whatever happened to making the punishment fit the crime?
In this case, the kid just got suspended. Seems like a dubious argument to claim he is entitled to any money at all. But leave it to the ACLU to set bad legal precedents while raking in the winnings...
Pummel the computer geek!
www.Jackassery.com
I'll betcha that if the principal were to put up a website mocking a student, he'd get it in the fookin' goolies in a nasty way.
Nice system. Real fair.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
The difference between this and a pamphlet, is that the pamphlet is physically at school, and distracts for the learning environment. Outside of school, students may do what they wish; it's not the school's job (nor is it within their right) to be protector or punisher of their pupils when not in the school setting. Outside of school, it is the parent's job to disclipline their child.
And yes I would be ok with that. That is something physical AT the school. That (as said for the thousandth time) distracts from the learning environment.
Alot of people tend to forget that just because someone is 18, that they are people too. Children/Teens aren't owned by their parents and especially not educators.
Then by that logic the kid should be able to say anything to anyone in school and receive no punishment. Heck, swear at the teachers, it's protected speech. As I remember my speech was a bit more limited than that.
It still restricted now the same as it was then.
Experiment: Go to your local school fine a teacher, if you had them when you were in school and don't like them, all the better. Begin swearing at the teacher, multiply languages make this even more entertaining. Keep this diatrabe up for over two minutes. Document results! More than likely you will be escorted off of the property. How is this any different than when you were in school?
Experiment 2:Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper that satiricly discusses the same local teacher. Manage to keep the paper from throwing away your letter and actually printing it. Document results! Five out of ten times you will receive a summons. How is this different from what this child did? Should we ban that issue of the newspaper from the school library.
I've got an idea we could have a big fire in the middle of town and require by law that every copy of that paper be brought and burned along with that damned Catcher in the Rye book!
The kid's actions were wrong. He should not have published such images to the world. The *assistant principal* (not the school) had every right to report him to a) his parents, b) his ISP or c) the law.
The school, however, had no right to expel him - it was nothing to do with them. Therefore, I believe the judgment to be correct. Just.
</soapbox>
Your argument about the page being downloadable is also wrong. Unless he downloaded it to the school, he hasn't done anything wrong. If the mere fact that is *could* be downloaded to the school is reason enough to take action against him, then you need to go arrest all those people whose websites with porn and violence could be downloaded by a student.
His parody was quite clearly speech, outside the hours and property of school.
t
This is NOT the same. If it had been posted on a school web site, yes. This was a personal web site not in any way associated with the school. It is more like he was distributing pamphlets somewhere other than school grounds. The school can't punish someone for something they did off school grounds.
I think the principal should be held personally responsible for this, not the taxpayers.
I don't like
The key here is that the student did not use school time or resources and was punished. I think it is a good decision because it draws very clear boundaries between school life and non-school life.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
I am sure he did have it blocked. But I am sure this was after many kids had already read it the computer lab
His freedom was violated because he was blocked from continuing his education due to something he said.
Then by that logic the kid should be able to say anything to anyone in school and receive no punishment. Heck, swear at the teachers, it's protected speech. As I remember my speech was a bit more limited than that.
-josh
Hate to say it, folks, but I'm slightly on the principals side.
... well, distributing pictures of the principal having sex with Marge Simpson. Repeatedly talking about their penis in the classroom. Making a hobby of reducing a girl in the room to tears. Free speech, yes. But most of you haven't been in the position of teaching in a public school, so you might underestimate the problem. It ain't fire in a crowded theatre -- no one's life is threatened, but I can tell you that quadratics do not get solved and approximating functions for oil prices don't get come up with while this crap is going on.
One year ago I spent four months teaching algebra in a High School in a normal middle class area. It changed a few of the ideas I had about public education. One of them was that you could get by on charisma, intelligence, and efforts to do something beyond the ordinary -- and by "get by" I mean you could educate high schoolers w/o resorting to disciplinary tactics and falling back on institutional authority (I had managed to do so in the past, in an academic summer camp setting).
I was probably 80-90% right -- that's about the number of students who are willing to at least go with the flow and/or respect you for your knowledge and efforts. The problem is that you're left with an intractable 10-20% who really just don't want to be there and don't respect you, and simply because you ARE the institutional authority. They're looking for a conflict/power struggle. If you let them get out of hand, you start losing part of the rest of the 80-90%. And one of the ways to let things get out of hand is allowing disrespect of others (students) or authority figures.
I'm not talking about objections to the way things are done (though you'd be surprised how fast THOSE can get out of hand -- "But we're not READY for the test today... PLEEEAAASE can we move it to Monday?"). I'm not talking about appeals. I'm talking about things like
What's the last resort a teacher has with a recalcitrant student? Or a principal? Nothing, really, except one thing: the ability to decide if the student can continue to attend their classroom -- or for a principal, that institution. I won't ever teach in a public school unless I have an darn near unconditional right to say who gets to stay in my classroom. It's harsh, but it'd be the only way I can make sure I can do my job.
I'd love to find a nice way to resolve that with free speech, but I can't think of anything. The only thing I can think of is this: Free Speech is guaranteed to citizens in law. Free education isn't an unalienable right; it's probably a privilege more on order with a driver's license. You want your education, you don't do anything to make the jobs of educators any harder than they already are.
(To those who notice I posted the same thing when this appeared in YRO last week, I'm sorry. Duplicate submission, duplicate post. Ask the Slashdot editors why they didn't run this story in the main subject queue last week).
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Tweet, tweet.
I beg to differ, sir/madam...
IMHO, A lot of schools today go way too far.
suspending kids for taking advil, listerine, carrying cell phones, etc. This was just another example of today's schools going to far, and trying to implement a communist-like governmental system on kid's rights. It is about damn time someone sued the hell out of them for obviously trying to take away an individuals rights.
I am not saying that the content of that website the student put up was good at all, and yes his parents should have talked to him about it, but suspending the student for a month is way
out of line and totally overboard. A wrong-doing was committed on both parts but IMHO, it is more on the the schools part than the kids. I think the school should have had a talk with his parents about the website, and that is by no means violating the kid's first ammendment rights.
What are the schools teaching our kids here?
IMHO, they are teaching our kids basically they
can't even raise a finger or be punished. In a
sense they are try to teach our kids to be whimps
and not stand up for what is right and just "accept it".
And accepting the suspension? PLEASE! History
did not get us here by just accepting something!
We have gotten here today by our fore-fathers
fighting for what is right, and that is our freedom!
Just my 2 cents worth.
I believe the 1/3 was put into place in some states because previously without limits, lawyers were sometimes taking a lot more than 1/3.
No rule. In fact, not even what the assistant principal did in this case controlled what the student did w/ his computer. The student has been continually free to do what he wants with his computer.
The student suffered only one consequence: he couldn't attend the school run by that darn principal anymore. Other than that, he was completely free. No loss of property, freedom of movement, or freedom of speech.
How bad is that?
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Tweet, tweet.
You are right. The person being defamed could very well have taken him to civil court for libel or some such thing.
They were TOTALLY wrong to interfere with his taxpayer funded education though. This had nothing to do with his behavior at school, or his studies.
A school administrator cannot use the power vested in them as an administrator to punish students outside the scope of the school itself.
Oh, go screw you'reself.
how was his freedom of speech clearly violated?
they didn't shut down his site or tape his mouth shut.
If you went into say your local immigration department (or some gov't institution where there are lots of people) with a laptop and showed the same site to everyone you could, would you not expect to be told to shut up or get out?
The ass. principal decided that instead of doing it the proper way and issuing a slander suit, they'd get lazy and use their position at the school to exact revenge/punishment. That should be the main issue, not alleged free speech stuff.
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Wait a second. A school employee cracked a student's account and manipulated it with malicious intent, so the school suspended the STUDENT for "hacking"?
funny munging
So what if they bitch on their own time? You think that as students we care?
If the kids hate this vice principal because they are a jerk, chances are they think that the vice principal is a jerk for a reason, generally speaking (in my experience anyway, as a student) they hate kids. Don't you dare try and think that this is one sided.
And thinking that censoring something will make it better only shows that the mindset is twice as bad as the original crime.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
say The Kid attends a *ian church meeting outside of school (not in school uniform). the School then sunspenced him for that."The student suffered only one consequence: he couldn't attend the school run by that darn principal anymore. Other than that, he was completely free. No loss of property, freedom of movement, or freedom of religon."
How bad is that?. Starting to se the point? The School Distrect, in the form of the Asstent Principal accting in his offical role, Discriminated agian't the student on grounds unrealted to his (in) school preformance.
So the School Disctrict Pays. From that point it is an interal School District matter how to fix it so there is no repeat. NOW the Mater of the Asnt. Principal vs the Kid on weither is Lible or Parody is a Seprerat Case/Issue
--Rogue, who's existance has yet to be disproved
Hmm, a student shows a lack of respect for his principal... I can see where this would bring down the entire education system of America. When I was in high school, no one called teachers funny names behind their backs. No one ever mouthed off in class, either. Teachers have never had to have a thick skin, because it used to be that all students loved and respected teachers just because of the simple fact that they were teachers.
Seriously, the only thing really new about this case is that the cartoon was put up on a website, instead of being passed around on a xeroxed piece of paper. You can't make a rule that says kids have to respect their teachers. Parents can teach kids to respect them, society can show respect to teachers by paying them what they are worth, etc, and that will filter down to more respect from the kids. If the value of the education system is being degraded day by day, it isn't because kids make fun of their teachers after class at their own homes.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
He has the right to say and do whatever the hell he wants to say, even offensive, as long as he doesn't use government in order to do that. He did not violate the principles basic rights and thus he did not wrong the principle.
You stupid bastard, you don't have no arms left. It's just a flesh wound.
Some seem to be losing sight of the bigger picture here. This kid created what is being billed as a parody site ( can anyone confirm this totally? has anyone seen the site? ), exercising his first amendment rights. Now, if his unjust discipline by the school had been 'let slide', then it only informs this school and others that it is okay to surpress a students ideas/expressions if they did not agree with it. This is plain wrong, immoral, and illegal. People are free to exercise the first amendment whenever they damn well choose, no exceptions ( though, in some settings, there are repurcussions, though this is not one of those settings ). Unfortunatly this fact is becoming more and more lost on people in a position of power, and it is nice to see this guy put back in his place. Now, my second point is, if this was a parody, and was billed as one, then it is even MORE protected by the laws of the USA than normal speech. Unfortuantly, more and more organizations & corporations are overlooking this fact also, resulting in anything from threats of judicial action to actual arrest and persecution ( See the story on www.salemnhpolice.com from last month ). Fortunatly, we have organizations such as the ACLU & EFF to help in these cases, otherwise we may have lost many more rights than we already have by now. It's a sad state of affairs when a people must fight to keep rights _already_ given to them by their government.
System possessed? # grep deamon
> But he doesn't set foot in the school again
bzzzt - wrong answer. The kid has a right to an education. The prinicipal does not have a right to censor anybody off of school hours and away from school grounds. Thus, the kid can say anything he damned well pleases at home, and still have every right and expectation to a fair and full education.
Uhh, I'm sure the school board and the parents are aware of which individual pissed basically their entire years' salary and then some away, and for what frivolous personal reason. I quite trust the dumb sh*t won't be doing it again, and it sets an excellent precedent for other dumb sh*ts to not do the same thing.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Okay, you're assuming that it was accessed on campus, and that he forced it down the throats of the other students. And seriously, School administrators have every right to punish dispruptive behavior that spills over on to their campus. that's just flat out wrong. It's not his fault that it "spilled over onto their campus." And even if he did access it from a school's computer, he should be punished for that as opposed to putting the site up in his own time, when the school had NO legal libel for him. So why should he have a moral libel for the school during non-school time?
We are talking about content created by a student, specifically targetting the school population as an audience. The principle might attempt to 'punish' the publishers of the content you mention, but he is not going to have much luck :)
Okay, lets try another lawsuit. You sue the KKK/Stormfront/Landover baptist/whatever for being hatemongers. They aren't specifically targeting people who go to this school, but anyone they can get to join in their hatemongering (even if that includes people at this particular school). Now say this shows up on one of the schools computers. Does this mean you should sue the hatemongers?
How about some quotes to drive my point home?
Censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of excercising real discretion. - Henry Steele Commager
Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one. - Thomas Jefferson
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Free Speech is guaranteed to citizens in law.
Absolutely false. The Supreme Court has said, time and time again, that the Constitution grants absolutely no rights. Instead, the Constitution recognizes some rights as existing even in the absence of law which establishes them. Under American legal theory, free speech is a universal human right; that even were the Government to abolish the First Amendment tomorrow, citizens would still enjoy the liberty of speaking freely.
Free speech is not guaranteed to citizens in law. Law recognizes that citizens possess free speech, whether the government wants to recognize it or not.
If the government provided your right to speak freely, then the government could revoke that right at any time. They can't, because they don't provide it.
You want your education, you don't do anything to make the jobs of educators any harder than they already are.
The students don't have a choice in whether or not to show up to school, for the most part--skip school and truancy officers start looking for you. Apparently, you'd like to have it both ways: you'd like for students to be required to show up for school, and you'd like to be able to forbid them from school if they're being disruptive.
You can have it one way or the other, but asking for it both strikes me as hypocritical.
Dumbass.
I'm not a lawyer, but can't the vice principal take out a defamation suit against the kid for implying or stating unfounded accusations about him? Some of those things sound like they could be professionally damaging to the vice principal.
For the record, I'm in support of the verdict. The school has no right to use their disciplinary system to punish him for something he did outside of school. However, I do think that the vice principal should have some options open to him personally if someone has published unfounded or unproven allegations against him.
Asikaa
Asikaa
Asikaa
Come in, twenty-seventy-seventy, your time is up.
Was the web site downloadable on school PCs? If so, this is no different than a student being suspended for distributing an obscene parody pamphlet, or running down the halls yelling obscene things about the assistant principle.
I think you misspelled "this is no different than a studend being suspended for distributing an obscene pamphlet off-campus, where other students could see it once they left the campus facilities".
Remember that the Internet != School Property. If you don't want your kids to carry on outside of school during school hours, then you close your campus. Many schools do this, to one extent or another. The only reason the kids could read the website during school hours is because they could leave the school property (i.e., the school's LAN) during school hours.
I know you're probably a troll, but the point's worth making anyway...
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
I think im gonna go do the same thing and hope my school finds out about it and suspends me for it so I can sue their asses and make 10k and buy a nice new computer. Wahoo. And I owe it all to you slashdot.
When speech causes harm, whether it be physical injuries, or mental anguish, to another person, the speaker has violated the rights of the target of the speech and therefore, not protected by the First Amendment. This is called slander or libel and is punishable by law.
/.
Yes, slander and libel are punishable by law.
No, slander and libel are NOT punishable by your principal!
The difference is that the law punishes people through due process and the review of a jury of their peers, whereas your local principal punishes you whenever he gets his panties in a bunch.
Do NOT confuse the issue. This is about whether a school can make rules about what students can say in their own homes, to their parents. It is NOT about libel.
Friends don't let retarded friends
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
While free speech is protected by the First Amendment, there must be drawn a limit to which this umbrella of protection is stopped. That limit is drawn where your speech (or in this case, writings) causes harm to another individual.
Are you a lawyer? I am not either, but from what I've seen things are not quite that simple. Certainly a lot of things are printed and/or broadcast every day that everyone would agree are legal and protected by the First Amendment but 'cause harm' to another. Think political cartoons, think editorial pages, think National Lampoon, MAD Magazine, even, for example Hustler.
was right to have his website censored by the school system
The limit for the school to 'censor' such a web site should be limited to their ability to block it from access through the school's internet connection. The school should not be allowed to punish kids for what they do and/or say off school grounds and outside school hours. If any wrong was done to the associate principal, he should have to resort to outside means to have it righted, not by abusing his position of authority within the schools. What if the schools decide to start punishing kids for expressing political or religious beliefs on their own time? Sure, they might be able to keep them from doing it at school, but what right to they have outside the schools? What if a kid distributes political flyers outside school and another kid brings them to school? Who did something wrong, the kid who distributed the flyers or the one who brought them to school? If someone is viewing a web page at school that the school has somehow banned, then it should be them that is punished, not the person who created it.
When speech causes harm, whether it be physical injuries, or mental anguish, to another person, the speaker has violated the rights of the target of the speech and therefore, not protected by the First Amendment.
Not necessarily. In many cases the courts have held that material that undoubtedly caused 'mental anguish', for example, are protected by the First Amendment. Satire, for example was upheld in the well publicized supreme court case as dramatized in 'The People vs. Larry Flynt'.
This is called slander or libel and is punishable by law
Slander and libel are not only fairly narrowly defined, they are very difficult to prove in court. For example, satire is usually considered defensible when it should be obvious that the claims would not be mistaken as true (for example, Hustler magazine's fake ad which implied that Jerry Fallwell had incestuous relations with his mother).
Deliberately spreading rumors or insulting another person is against the law
Deliberately spreading false rumors may be illegal, or it may not. Deliberately spreading true rumors is almost always going to be legal. Insulting people is not necessarily illegal either. I could say 'I think Hillary Clinton is a lying, cheating bitch'. That is legal. If that is my opinion, then the statement is entirely factual, regardless of wheter Hillary really is a lying cheating bitch or not. In order for something to be libelous or slanderous, it has to be false. Saying 'I think the associate principal sodomizes goats' may be significantly different legally than saying 'I've seen the associate principal sodomizing goats'.
Just ask the National Inquirer.
Fine. The Enquirer wins almost every case brought against them. If they didn't, they'd have been out of business a long time ago, because they piss off a lot of people, especially politicians and celebrities who have a lot of influence.
I don't agree with the ACLU all the time, but it sickens me even more when I think of the warped sense of justice and what the consititution and bill of rights are all about that kids get sent by the wacked out school systems in this country.
I believe it would have been the right of the offended party to sue for slander or libel, and perhaps win the suit. But that does not give the right to give a suspension from school. It does not disrupt school, and I can be reasonably certain to say it didn't violate a school rule that was given in writing. Suspending the student amounts to censorship since it was not created using anything provided by the school. I'm not saying the student was right in posting that, nor am I suggesting that the student had a right to post that, and I think something could have been done, and probably should have been done, but a suspension, especially a rather long suspension, is not at all justified, and I believe that the school did infringe on the rights of the student.
If the kid distributed pamphlets off school grounds, you bet they would find there way onto school grounds.
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
The terms libel/slander that have been thrown around in previous posts don't really have any merit here, but the term "hostile work environment" sure does.
Unfortunately we live in a country where the courts say we can't have swimsuit calendars in our cubicles, we can't insult the French (who so richly deserve it), and we can't discuss Seinfeld at the water cooler without leaving our employers open to million dollar lawsuits from the more prudish employees (or ones who can fake it well enough to win at trail).
This is WRONG, but it is the world we live in. The school lost $62,000. But that is far better than loosing a million+. This however does set a precedent, which will hopefully prevent the school from having to make this Yosarian choice again.
"you know why? Because we got the bomb, thats why" -Dennis Leary
He published it in a format that was available to students on school property. I see no functional difference between this and a paper pamphlet. Please enlightment me.
Would you support a student who, during school hours stood just off school property and shouted obscenities about the principle?
You are splitting hairs
-josh
Would you support a student who, during school hours stood just off school property and shouted obscenities about the principle?
So do you, in turn, support France for pressuring Yahoo! to drop Nazi-related auctions, even though they aren't in France's jurisdiction, which would be like waving a swastika banner across the road from a synagogue?
Splitting hairs often seems dependant on which hairs you choose...
Well, we are missing some information that may or may not change one's opinion.
#1 thing I want to know: what did his parents do to discourage further acts like this? A monetary award of $10,000 probably doesn't help. If he's a bit immature, then such a reward may reinforce his behavior. Personally, I wouldn't mind my kid satirizing the asst. principal. A satire of him having sex and smoking weed, however, I would never approve of, and despite the principal's lackluster response, my kid would get his just reward from me.
Second, what prompted the kid to think so badly about the asst. principal in the first place? If he was the lousiest jerk school official I'd ever heard of, then maybe the kid's extreme behavior had a real motive that justfied it in his mind (again, however, I would hope I had brought up my kid to think through a more reasonable response).
Ah shut up.
ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
>However, the principle should have
darn near absolute authority about what happens
within the school. And that includes who gets to attend.
I have to disagree. Suppose the principle doesn't like the kid's colour of skin? There are some limits to what he can do, its funded by the government.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
It is sad that they lost some money that could be spent on say another T1 or music program,
T1? Music program?
Not bloody likely.
More like 'New uniforms for the football team' or 'more balls for the baseball team'...
If there is any organization that knows how to efficiently waste money, it's the amerikan public school.
RG
----
Deepthroat my submarine, swallow my seamen.
they shouldn't use their 'position' to abuse those they disagree with.
Not in the US, the principal couldn't. As far as I understand the US libel laws, actionable libel has occurred when the libelous party knowingly represents something which is known to be false as true (or vice versa). So it has to be a knowing misrepresentation of the real facts. In this case, the student was not claiming that the principal truly had sex with a cartoon character, nor would I guess the student truly meant to claim that the asst. principal was a pedophile (but maybe the student did mean that . . . who knows). Unless the student was asserting the web site's claims and representations were factually true, none of it is actionable for slander/libel. It is very difficult to prove libel in the US, and this difficulty is mostly intentional in favor of free speech. Other countries, UK for example, have struck a different balance.
Basically the asst. principal's only recourse was a thick skin and maybe to somehow win the student's respect, which is extraordinarily difficult for any authority figure in this country. But you certainly don't win respect by trying to shut someone up.
If he had published a pamphlet saying the exact same things as the web site and distributed it off-campus, there would be nothing the school could do about it, even if someone brought that pamphlet onto school property.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
We are talking about content created by a student, specifically targetting the school population as an audience. The principle might attempt to 'punish' the publishers of the content you mention, but he is not going to have much luck :)
The difference between this and a pamphlet, is that the pamphlet is physically at school, and distracts for the learning environment.
There is NO difference. If someone can pull up a copy on a computer lab monitor, it is physically at school. Just because it is bits on a screen and not bits on paper doesn't somehow make it magically different.
Nevertheless, while disrespect and disruptful behavior cannot be tolerated on the school campus, what happens off the school campus was not my concern. Frankly, I find it ridiculous that, as overworked as teachers and administrators are, they chose to make an issue of something that happened off-campus. That's *LOOKING* for trouble, and surely there's enough trouble *ON* campus for administrators?
Now, if this kid was going around *ON CAMPUS* saying to other kids, "Look at this disrespectful page I made!", and him doing that was disrupting class and the school environment, that's a different story. But you have to make that case, complete with documentation of how his *ON CAMPUS* behavior disrupted the school environment. This is under the old principle of "free speech does not cover shouting 'fire!' in a crowded theater" -- i.e., that disruptive speech on-campus is not protected speech. But the on-caompus speech has to be what's documented as the problem -- *not* the off-campus speech.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
"Sure, if the assistant principle had somehow shutdown the web site this might be justified, but he did not. He merely punished the student for violating the rules of the school, which to my mind is within his rights."
I'm assuming that you mean "principal" when you say "principle". Buy a dictionary. =)
Unfairly suspending a student is actionable under current case law. Additionally, nothing done by a student off of school property can usually be considered as grounds for a suspension.
"Was the web site downloadable on school PCs? If so, this is no different than a student being suspended for distributing an obscene parody pamphlet, or running down the halls yelling obscene things about the assistant principle."
If the student is distributing a web page, pamphlet, etc. on school grounds, this is actionable, but if students at school are accessing a web site through the school's internet connection, then obviously the school is distributing the web page _in the school_, not the student.
"Freedom of speech is certainly sacrosanct, but this boy's freedom of speech was not violated -"
How is this not prior restraint? Or are you arguing that a school isn't a government agency, or that it's rules somehow don't fit the mould? Anyway, that's not what the case is about, so I'm not going to argue about it.
"he did not have to take down his web site (though he may have of his own accord)." He could have broken the rules and gotten a suspension, right.
"In the same way, you have every right to put up an independent parody web site criticizing your employer, but don't expect to keep your job when they find out."
Right... But, similarily, you could always go after them for wrongful termination.
It was published in the school by the school, not by the student. Again, learn how to use the language properly, please. =)
However, in this case there is clear evidence of a student disrespecting the establishment and taking action
/establishment/, we can't have that!
Oooh! Disrespecting the
Wouldn't want our future citizens thinking, would we?
After all, a thinking, questioning population is SO much harder to manipulate and control...
But, these kids are in school to learn what the school has to teach them, not to change the rules of the school.
Great...Let's teach our kids to be complacent, unquestioning droids.
After all, they'll just grow up to be taxpayers, and then they'll have representatives to speak for them, if the representatives deem it necessary.
Rebellion is the only thing that drives evolution in a political system, be it a school, or a country.
Progress is not made without rebellion.
RG
----
Deepthroat my submarine, swallow my seamen.
HAHAHAH the poor fella raises goats in his spare time, and is over stresssed at his job, and cant take a joke.. sounds like this guy NEEDS some of that wacky tabaccy.. and calm down what a hoot
>the kid should be able to say anything to anyone in school and receive no punishment.
I don't think that this is true because its on school property.
My opinion is that it was wrong for the assist. principal to "strike back" at the student in such an unrelated way. It would have been more approprate if he/she had attacked the website itself.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I'm not sure where you live / went to school, but I know that here in Oregon, especially in the Beaverton/Hillsboro area, the administration is both stupid and scary - seemingly inept in every way (i.e. network up 1/2 the time), but also paranoid as hell - how about webcams on each and every computer that are always on and are monitored actively?
Oh. they got that awesome proxy stuff too, you know, the one that filters "offensive" sites, like slashdot and the usual keywords - god forbid you learn anything other than keyboarding in a school that gets several hundred thousand yearly (from independent corporations such as intel) to teach students about "high tech"
Westview High School is especially bad and I will give you a description of my experiences there.
How about this - a school employee hacked a kid's webpage about why a teacher sucked (granted this was when angelfire was just starting, with all of its bugs, couldn't really be construed as hacking)
and changed it to mirror the School Disrict homepage - all of this was, of course approved by the administration.
Oh... they changed his password too, not just edited the page.
He complained, put a petition around the school - and lo and behold, they gave him a MONTH suspension for "hacking" into computers. No evidence, nothing - just removed him from campus one day, gave him a letter saying that he was suspended, and if he came on campus, he would be arrested and charges filed for trespassing. They didn't answer his phone calls, refused to talk directly with him, etc.
He went on a bender for that month (booze, weed, acid), so he didn't exactly defend himself, just took a break from school.
Whats good is to see somebody actually stand up for their rights. Same shit happened to me, but being a Canadian citizen in an American school (legally, of course, I have my green card now...) Needless to say, I let it slide.
Oh... word of advice - if you're in a shitty high school (and not in your senior year) - drop out, get your GED and go the local community college.
A GED is really easy to get(with a gr. 10 education), especially if you're fairly intelligent.
College is so much better - the teachers are 10x better too, not to dump on all HS teachers, but the majority of them suck (which is why they "choose" to work for less pay in a less respected orgainization). College teachers actually know how to teach and also know the material.
Enough "rant" for now, just be aware that this does happen, and its freaking great to see people defending themselves.
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
With all these morons trampling over individual rights nowadays, it's nice to see that these people occasionally put their foot down in a bed of burning coals.
And while I hate the "litigate everything" approach, it's times like this where I see why it becomes necessary.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I am really getting angry at slashdot for repeatedly using their own ideas instead of just reporting the news.
So student decides he will mock his asst principal, and this is considered crazy that he gets in trouble? Doing this to a boss, or doing anything to the principal at school would be ok, but a website makes it ok? Yes, the children of today definitely need a right to make fun of their teachers and principals.
I am only 15, but I see this as very crazy.
please slashdot, report just the news, not your own views while ignoring ones that contradict those views.
I 100% agree with your point, my girlfriend's history teacher in high school got beaten several times by his students, and again, they can't do anything about that. What I don't understand, is that they would pay 52 grand for lawyer's services who could not even defend this strong point.
http://dtum.livejournal.com
Why is it that 4/5ths of everyone here is thinking like a herd of knee-jerk buzzword fanatics? You see "1st Amendment" "webpage" "free speech" "student suspended for expressing opinions" etc. and he's the instant Martyr Du Jour.
Take a minute to project this same situation into a different setting: You make a website portaying your boss involved in various acts of vulgarity, and then you go and tell everyone in the office about it (don't even pretend this kid didn't tell everyone at school) and if(when) they figure out it's you there will be hell to pay.
High school is just like every other voluntary institution, if you don't want to be there, leave. And if you want to stay, don't piss people off and break the rules. When did people forget that actions have consequences? If I go and make lewd comments about some guys girlfriend and get pounded for it, I don't sue the guy for attacking my freedom of speech. Why is high school this magical place where you can say/do anything you wan't and shouldn't have to suffer the consequences
And speaking of doing things on your own time, what if I'm a high school kid smoking weed accross the street from my school after school is out, I'm off school property, and I'm not on school time, but I'll bet I would get in trouble for it. Why is anything I do on the web magically protected??
The point is: be careful what court cases you applaud. Personally the ACLU scares the S*** out of me, and when we are applauding the ACLU for robbing a school district of $62,000 to defend a kid's right to post slander and libel on the internet, I start really getting scared
P.S. Substitute the word "Principle" in the article with "Female classmate" and tell me who's side you are on.
The simplest act of surrealism is to walk out into the street, gun in hand, and shoot at random
Comments should be like skirts. Short enough to keep your attention, but long enough to cover the subject
"but because the value of America's educational system is being degraded day after day. "
because america's schools suck. i live in alabama and our schools already suck bad enough.... but now the gov't has decided to slam us into proration cuz they need to cut from somewhere. so they just decide to cut from us. the court decision is tomorrow... we could possible get slammed with an 18.6% cut in education funding... but none of it will come from the high schools. it will come from the colleges. well guess what. i'm in college. so we'll be royally fukt. ppl deserve the right to be able to dis the schools. most of em deserve it.
--
Tres_Status
stephen
>It's funny how people talk about consitiutional rights all the time, but fail to think about the spirit behind that constitution. The kid's a jerk.
Wasn't the Constitution and Declaration written by people the British would considered "jerks"?
Think about that when you talk about the "spirit of the constitution"
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
From my dimly remembered high school law classes there are some signifigant exceptions to libel and slander in the USA.
A true statment (or one that would have been beleved to be true to a reasonable person) is not libel (or slander). In the UK I have been told that trueth is not an absolute shield, and you can be found guilty if you speed the truth with an intent to harm. In the USA trueth is an absolute shield. Absolute. To a lesser extent the "look I had this evidence, and it seemed valid and compelling, even though it later turned out wrong" is a shield, but apparently not absolute.
There are also exceptions to things that are clear parodies. This is how Hussler got away with saying all manner of nasty things about Jerry Fallwell. I think that case went to the US Suprime Court.
There are also exceptions for public figures, but they are more narrow, and I think it really just brodens the other exceptions (like you might get in trubble for writing that I'm a wife beater, baised on flimsy evidence, but maybe not for a TV star baised on the same evidence).
Remember, I'm not a laywer, and worse then that this is baised on information more then ten years old (the law does change), and even worse was gained in a USA public school. The same one that didn't teach me to spell. So there may be more exceptions, or fewer. Or something. Talk to a real lawyer before you try to "not quite" slander (or libel) someone.
Would you support a student who, during school hours stood just off school property and shouted obscenities about the principle? You are splitting hairs -josh
I would actually support the student. The principal has no authority over the kid for what he or she does outside of school.
Accepting and not questioning punishment for expressing a controversial opinion is going to help "the spirit of the constitution" sink in? What Constitution are you talking about? The one I'm familiar with says that everyone has free expression rights, even if you don't like what they say, and even if they're jerks.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
man, where'd you get your education? it's spelled skool.
Why do you think a principal is entitled to punish a student for legal behavior committed off school grounds?
If the principal didn't want the pages to be accessible on school PCs, then it's up to him to figure out how to block it using the censorware programs that school officials and Congressmen are so enamored of. It's not the same as running through the school shouting obscene things or distributing obscene pamphlets because:
If you feel the need to have a "but" in there, then you don't really think it's sacrosanct.
I.e. "You're free to say anything you want, but don't complain when the government punishes you for doing so." How exactly is that freedom?
Public schools are not the same as private employers. Employers are generally free to violate your constitutional rights as they see fit (with some restrictions, like firing for physical disabilities). But public schools are government institutions, teachers and principals are government employees, and therefore they are held liable when they violate your constitutional rights.
Yaaaay! Now I get to send my tax money to some blood-sucking lawyers instead of to the struggling school system!
Yippee. Extortion via the legal system and the kid has $10,000 in beer money. Lawyer gets a new Lexus. Teacher now has page extolling his alleged homosexuality on the web.
Libel? What's that?
The assistant principal could have easily sued for slander, or pursued some out of school action. I think he failed by trying to act within the school. What the kid did was mean and wrong, but it wronged the assistant principal, not the school.
"And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts and to pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." - Thomas Jefferson (1787)
True, but here in Illinois we have "at-will" employment, which means that my employer has no obligation to continue to employ me and provide me with a salary in exchange for work. I don't publicly criticize my employer because I value the contract between us. I give them my time and energy, and they give me money to buy new computer equipment with. Isn't America great?
On the other hand, we also have "compulsory" education for anyone under 18, which means that they are required by law to attend school unless they are disruptive to the education of others around them.
One could argue that it's for the student's own good, but when I was in school I didn't feel it necessary to have any respect for educators and administrators beyond what I felt they individually earned. After all, students are required by law to spend 6-8 hours a day at school for five days out of the week without any compensation for their time.
Then, they are sent home with several pounds of books and homework and expected to do at least 2-3 hours of homework each night, again without any form of compensation. I still have muscle problems in my shoulder from lugging a camping shoulder bag (the only thing I found that would hold those heavy math & history books without breaking) to and from school every day.
To expect a student to be a prioner of the educational system (that is, after all, what they are...some even have to wear uniforms like felons) and not criticize the authority figures who have power over them is ludicrious. Further, to punish them in school for something extracurricular done using their own resources is seriously overstepping their bounds. Maybe this ruling will send a message to our educators that student are human beings, and that treating a school like a prison is no way to create an environment conductive to rational inquiry, only rote memorization.
While I obviously don't know details, I'd be willing to bet that, more often than not, costing the school district $62,000 because you overstepped your authority would be considered a Career Limiting Move.
Not if the people with hire/fire authority over you believe that the control you set a precedent for is worth any cost. Or, not if the people with hire/fire authority over you never bother to follow up on "make sure this line item expense does not happen again".
Free speech in the U.S. is limited when it presents a "Clear and Present Danger", such as yelling fire in a crowded theater. (Note: IANAL) The assiant principal may have had a slander or liable case. However, the principal was clearly in no kind of danger (present or otherwise). Thus, the student's First Amendment Right remains in effect.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-202-4930756.html
sulli
RTFJ.
Ok, if it was OK because he did it off campus and it had nothing to do with school, answer me this? Why is it that sports members get suspended from playing if they are caught drinking (in situations wholy unconnected with school)?
Yet they do all of the time.
Personally, I have never understood the logic in that.
If the FBI wants to arrest me, I'll be glad to give them my address.
. . .
No takers? Hey, I guess the government is smarter then you. You're allowed to advocated pretty much anything you want. Personally, I advocate shooting you in the head.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
The teacher should have (could have?) sued for slander if the parody was mean spirited. Really didn't have anything to do with his school. Speach is in fact still free, but if you attack someone or their reputation because your P.O.'d you should expect retaliation. I'd do it, wouldn't you?
Ctimes2
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
All right! If the kids don't learn anything else, at least they can learn to solve their problems with violence. What a great message. Why did I never think of it?
are you a dirtyfreak? I am.
The school district is out $62K, which might otherwise have gone to fund various educational projects. Meanwhile, the people who made the decision to censor are getting away with relatively light (if any) punishment.
I submitted this the day it happened on a local news station (here). North Thurston school district is across the street. I guess it has to be posted on c|net before it can get on the main page =)
But what about the rights of the censors. Aren't they entitled to free speech? Don't they have the right to tell some one to shut up? When will somone stand up for these people? The censors have a right to be heard, too!
- - - If the sun is a star, why can't I see it at night?
Read title, yes I have nothing else to say. I'm glad he won his case. PARODY IS GOOD.
The webpages were mean. But the school in both cases did not have the right to suspend the student, because they did it on their own time/resources.
Its like... If the students were making fun of a non-school-faculty member, they wouldn't have been suspended. The person being made fun of would have had to go to the ISP/Police to have it straitened out. The school seems to abuse their power by bypassing that and suspending the student.
If I make fun of my next-door neighboor, who is a police officer, he cannot throw me in jail JUST BECAUSE he is a police officer. He would have to do everything a normal citizen would have to do: Being in a place of high authority does not mean you enjoy special previlages when things are directed at you personally.
Oh, and despite how this article in slashdot is titled, the crux of this case is more about abuse of authority than it is about censorship.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Sure, because the student should have KNOWN every single ip address associated with the school and blocked access to it. Okay, and if a student publishes a parody of his principle in a major magazine (it doesn't matter which) and some OTHER student purchases the magazine and brings it into school, does this still cound as the student as being the DISTRIBUTOR? MAybe the magazine gets punished? It wasn't like the kid posted the message on the school's own servers (that might have merit).
Freedom of speech is certainly sacrosanct, but this boy's freedom of speech was not violated - he did not have to take down his web site (though he may have of his own accord).
No of course not, he does not have to take the site down. He has the RIGHT to have that web site. And as long as he has it up, does the school have a right to deny him an education? I don't think so.
Freedom of speech is certainly sacrosanct, but this boy's freedom of speech was not violated - he did not have to take down his web site (though he may have of his own accord).
With an employer, you CLEARLY have some form of contract, and your employer isn't obligated to retain you as an employee, not by any means. The STATE has an OBLIGATION to provide you with an education and to make sure that you are encouraged to excercise your rights in society. Why do most schools mandate that at some point you take a civics class? You are expected to KNOW your rights and if somebody infringes upon them, you go after them.
You have made a poor analogy with poor logic...
Do you really want a civil servant to have control over what you say or do in your private time?
If the principal feels he has a beef about the content of the student's web site, he can get a lawyer and sue for libel and/or slander. (IANAL) But to deny the student his education, well where in law does that authority come from?
>was right to have his website censored by the school system.
I didn't read anything about his website being censored.
>This is called slander or libel and is punishable by law.
And this is what I don't get, why didn't the assist. principal take legal action against him? I don't get what doing something outside of school has to do with being fit to attend school? If its so bad then use the tools given by the laws.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
As a member of the ACLU, I feel that censorship on the net is a violation of our constitutional rights. The government has slipped a fast one on the constituency by saying that all computers in public places must have some sort of proxy server or software bans on particular sites. Traditionally, proxy servers are extraordinarily restrictive, and don't allow access to sites that haven't been appealed to the server admins. Software is even worse, taking sloppy processing of key words within the sites as a basis to ban them. Not just porno is affected. marS EXploration sites are adversely as well. Overall, censorship is more of bane than it is a boon, and if America wasn't so self-absorbed with its attempt to implant its fundamentalist christian beliefs on everyone, then censorship would indeed not be a problem.
Now, if this isn't one of the most pious-sounding and morally smug pieces of garbage that I've had the misfortune of finding!
Don't you remember that it was the assistant principal who made the decision to suspend this kid? It was his high-handed behavior and arrogant assumption that his authority extended beyond the school halls that led to the lawsuit.
This could have been prevented, but by spanking whom?
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
The kid's parents should have given him a talking to for disrespecting the principal and accepted the suspension.
Oh come on.
The vast majority of school administrators are just piss-poor managers that couldn't make it in the real world. Were talkin' total PHB here.
Admins that deserve respect will get it, ones that don't will be despised and reviled.
This kid prolly *is* a jerk, but I doubt the admin he was making fun of was any less of a jerk.
Respect, unlike authority, is something that is earned, not given.
RG
----
Deepthroat my submarine, swallow my seamen.
The argument has come up again and again - comparing this kid's web site to a paper pamphlet. The difference is that there is choice involved. I would draw a closer parallel to something like whispering about a phone number you can call and the answering machine you get is a message about how terrible the assistant principal is. Just because that number's there doesn't mean you HAVE to call it - it's all up to the person dialling the phone.
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
Riddle me this, Batman... A site is put up on the web making a parody of an individual in a relatively closed environment. The court system upholds the right of the person who posted the parody. A site is put up on the web making a parody of a large, multinational, monopolistic corporation - I won't mention any names *cough*MS*cough* and the persons responsible for the parodies are threatened with enormous fines and jail time. Funny how that works.
Please learn the subtle, yet important differences between "your" and "you're" before accusing others of being dumbasses.
Your pal,
atrowe
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
I would actually support the student. The principal has no authority over the kid for what he or she does outside of school.
Absolutely. However, the principle should have
darn near absolute authority about what happens
within the school. And that includes who gets to attend. Disruptive influences can be tossed out.
So I say: let the kid keep his website up, no problem. But he doesn't set foot in the school again -- and hey, if the principal really sucked as much as the student thought, then the student wouldn't be all that bad off. The school can block the website and education can go on in peace. The student can find more satisfactory arrangements. And lawyers for an actual libel case.
--
Tweet, tweet.
The point you seem to be missing (twice already) is that the speech was ouside of school. The reason schools are able to punish students (which hinders their own education) is because they are hindering their peers ability to learn in school by creating an unsafe/unsutable environment for learning. The schools CANNOT control what goes on outside of school.
The parody had very little to do with school, and didn't impair the learning process more than anything else would. The appropriate thing would have been for the student to have been sued.
Unfortunately, our legal system rarely ever, possibly never, result in a win-win situation. Perhaps because of the nature of the beast.
This suit, along with many others sprouting from students' (like me!) realization that they have little or no rights, sets precedent for those who feel the need to use their position. In this case, that of a vulnerable student being deprived of his/her education by detention or suspension (COME ON, REALLY!? An extra hour or two in school could do many people more good than harm...especially for some of the kids in my school.)
On the related matter of the increase in civil lawsuits: I seriously doubt that our legal system was intended or should be used to settle petty disputes, at least not at any financial penalty to either party. Get a neutral third party and settle it like civilized people! I feel the need to criticize the stupidity of some of these "get rich quick" schemers lurking in the US. There are far worse problems than wasting money that could be going to starving children, welfare, social security, or even military purposes on Joe Shmoe's inability to cope with a little harmless banter! At least don't take their textbooks away for suspending you...
On the other hand, I'm already meters deep in feces, I might as well continue to say that the school should not be the target of this lawsuit--the vice principal and his supporters who reacted in that manner should be the plaintiffs. Was the kid's lawyer trying to make a quick buck by targeting the entire school rather than the select group of people who caused the trouble, or was it intended to threaten school faculty?
Teaching isn't as low a profession as some may imagine--I know some very bright high school teachers who, IMO, should be college professors. The teachers of this school are being penalized for the administration's stupidity. Often, people fail to realize the different between administrators and teachers. Too bad for the kids.
My apologies for any incoherencies.
treker
You're thinking about "slip-and-fall" or other liability suits. In Michigan, lawyers get 1/3 of the award by law for those.
Hey, come on, proving that something IS redundant is not IN ITSELF redundant! Ig'nurnt moderators!
--
--hongpong.com
CB
he spoke his mind. he didn't wrong anybody. he couldn't get sued for slander, it's satire. did his site ever get mirrored?
This kid did not pass this out in the form of a Pamplet at the school. Rather he placed this document on a non-school server using non-school computers to produce the document. Arguably, the guilty party here are the people who may have used school computers to view this document (being that they in a form brought the document to the school). Also might the school be somewhat responsible if this document passed thru the proxy, considering that they are in a sense legally liable for the content if they actively monitor it(AOL got in trouble with its chat lines a few years ago iver something like this)? Just thought I'd add my own twist to this.
Where have I seen this before?
Doh!
His _was_ relevant and _is_ relevant. Not redundant, worth repeating. ;)
Yours is a repetition of nothing and is redundant.
Gotta watch out for things that are satisfied vacuously
Students even have Constitutional rights when on school grounds, even though this case is about something done off grounds in the student's free time. But let me beat you with a cluestick about on-grounds rights, anyway.
The Court has held repeatedly that, even on school grounds during school hours, students have Constitutional rights including the right to free speech and free press as guaranteed by the First Amendment. A student's First Amendment rights while on school grounds are slightly limited, but not to the extent people like you--and even a lot of misguided teachers and admins--seem to think. For instance, students have the right to distribute printed materials ("free student newspapers," pamphlets, etc.) on school grounds between, before, and after classes, in accordance with prescribed guidelines set by the district as to location and time. One would think that the administration could therefore limit such free press entirely, but the Court has set limits to the rights of schools in setting up such guidelines, so that any overbroad school regulations restricting speech and press are considered unconstitutional. This makes perfect sense, since the public school system is in fact an arm of the government and therefore cannot violate the Constitution. And, despite the fact that most students are under-18, the Court has ruled that minors have Constitutional protections in schools, though slightly limited ones. In private schools, though, students don't have such explicit rights, since the schools are not an arm of the government and therefore free to disallow exercise of some rights.
I know this not because I'm a lawyer (IANAL), but because in 11th grade I was suspended for 3 days for distributing an alternative student newspaper written and published by me and several friends. I liked to call it my school's "free student newspaper" since it wasn't subject to the censorious editorial control of a certain idiot vice principal. See, in 10th grade I had submitted an article against race-based scholarships and my school's Minority Parent Association, which I viewed as providing minority students with more opportunities and help seeking scholarships than the white students had. Funny thing is, in my school whites were a 70-30 minority, and when the article was published I had to receive a security detail for a few days to escort me to and from classes and then after that I still had to contend with mistaken people who thought I was a racist for wanting *equal* opportunities--I even had a desk thrown at me, and a national newspaper local to me did an article about the controversy. Well, after that the newspaper rejected most of my articles, and the one they did finally publish was so horribly censored abnd mutilated that my idiot vice principal even changed the common phrase "liberal education" to the nonsensical "conservative education," thinking it had something to do with politics. Bah. So, I got several friends, including the Homecoming Queen, to write articles with a conservative slant, and published them as *The Federalist* which I had printed at a local shop (today, one could print the same quality on any home laser printer). Funny thing is, except for my articles, every one of my writers was a woman or black, so our conservative newspaper was very diverse. I submitted it to the principal for approval of a time and place for distribution, as per school regs, but the administration nailed me when they found out I'd given advance copies to students who'd written articles for me. I researched the whole legal area, and appealed, and the suspension was expunged when I brought the area superintendant a pile of photocopied, highlighted legal decisions by the Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, affirming that the school's regs were constitutionally vague and overbroad. All it took was the threat of a lawsuit, and me handing him a pile of decisions affirming my rights to free press even in public school.
He could have been a jackass and not acknowledged my rights, but he folded before I did (it was a bluff--my family was too poor to sue). He recognized my rights once they were shown to him clearly, in the form of Court deisions with the good bits highlighted.
Since then the First Amendment has been a pet subject of mine, and I can tell you that since public schools are an arm of the Government, they are not allowed to completely take away any rights of students. They are only legally allowed to put reasonable limits on those rights, ones which are necessary for maintaining order. Trying to eliminate First Amendment protections does not instill order, it breeds contempt in students for the hypocrites who teach us one thing about rights and then demonstrate another through abuse of discretion and authority. This is why things like Columbine happen, because students with half a brain or more realize that their rights are systematically abusd, and then they strike out violently against such oppression. The sad part is, this makes misguided school admins clamp down further, which only alienates students more and will lead to more rebellious outbursts. And the thing that makes me most upset is the realization that, in today's climate, that same administrator who reversed my suspension and affirmed my rights, would probably have gone the other way even when presented with all the evidence I gave him. It's sad and unfortunate, and it teaches our kids (most of the smart ones, anyway) that government is there to oppress them, not ensure their rights. When the government, and parents even, start treating 16 year olds as having no more rights than 6 year olds, that breeds so much unnecessary enmity...
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
It's almost true. I ammended it a bit, and also added a note at the bottom of the comment that indicated I knew I was submitting the same comment.
I did it because the article I posted the same comment on ran in YRO but not the main slashdot queue. I did it because I beleive in what I posted and want others to consider the impact decisions like this might have on education.
I don't need the karma. I've been floating near the cap for a while. I just post as I see it to get my ideas out, and let the points fall where they may.
--
Tweet, tweet.
This is mere conjecture but certain violations permit triple damages -- for example certain antitrust violations and civil rights actions. Further the amount lawyers get is not necessarily predetermined; in contingency fee cases attorney usually take a cut of the pot. But otherwise lawyers and clients are free to negotiate a fee for services rendered. If more than one lawyer is involved, which is more the rule than the exception, then the the fee can easily be several times larger.
Same thing happened to me last year. I had a piece of writing on my web site last year, which had some insulting things written about some (approx. half) of the people in my year level at school. This was on my own web site, done in my own time. When an Info Tech class at school found it and spread it around, word got to the principle. To cut to the chase, I got a two day suspension, and a detension on top of that. I felt pretty hardly done by, to this day I still say that I didn't really deserve any punishment. I found out in the process, that we in Australia don't have the right of free speech, and what I had done was harrassment, stupid law I say.
I don't know if this happened or not, but what if this kid created the page on his own time/computer, posted it then at school he (or someone else) gives the URL to a buddy, who looks at it on a classroom computer.
How is this any different than distributing flyers of the same picture in the school? I think as with so much net stuff, the traditional boundaries start to get pretty murky.
I don't think 10,000 would be enough though for that kind of shit.
???????
Yes the boy has freedom of speech, but the laws of cause and effect are in no sense suspended when someone wants to exercise their free speech. If I exercized my free speech late at night in a residential neighborhood I would fully expect the cops to come arrest me. If I put up a website threatening bodily harm to prominent figures (rock stars, celebrities, et al) I would expect someone to come to my door and ask me come questions.
But if I'm a college student I build a slanderous website that disturbs school activities and degrades the authority structure there I should expect to be awarded $10,000 thanks to the ACLU.
Does anyone else have the slightest problem with this??
The simplest act of surrealism is to walk out into the street, gun in hand, and shoot at random
Comments should be like skirts. Short enough to keep your attention, but long enough to cover the subject
As if the school district doesn't have anything better to do.
I wonder if that means that I could have sued my school over a test I took.
I was given a test that included a question asking for my opinion of the reading material and how it pertained to the subject of the class.
Since the class was American Lit. and the book was "Catcher in the rye", I said that I hated the book found that, in my opinion, it didn't fit in my idea of literature or had any bearing on the class. The only question I missed on the test was that one, and I was givenI a D- on the test.
Since I was asked my opinion and gave it, would I have a case ?
Just wondering.
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
I am not missing a point, we merely disagree, a point which you seem to be missing. This material was accessible on school property, during school hours. It was published to students in school just as effectively as if the student had handed out a pamphlet.
You appear to disagree with me on this point. But ask yourself this: would it be ok to suspend a student who stands just off of school grounds and shouts obscenities about the principle? If not, why not?
-josh
>That limit is drawn where your speech (or in
>this case, writings) causes harm to another
>individual.
Ouch. Your writing is hurting my eyes. Can I sue you too?
>however in this particular case, the student
>has crossed the line
Define any `line' that the student has crossed and I'll define a corresponding `line' that he has not crossed.
>This is called slander or libel and is
>punishable by law. Just ask the National
>Inquirer
Slander and Libel only applies when you're trying to portrait your statements as truth. In this case, it is obviously a parody.
Of course, parodies cause harm. In fact, ALL of them hurts. Yet, however hurting they might be, they're ALL protected speech.
A school's authority extends to the gates and no further. And the fine will make school boards think twice in future before violating free speech.
Does his site still exist? Does anyone have a link? or a google cache?
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
Did you hear that Themes.org was asked to take down some themes of MacOS? Also,the DoJ is filing an anti-trust suit against Microsoft.
Sorry... It's Monday.
_________________________________________________
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Yeah, but the student couldn't suspend him from his job as principal for two weeks, could he? The point being that the principal excercised authority he had no right to. The student would never have the opportunity to do so.
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
Sure, if the assistant principle had somehow shutdown the web site this might be justified, but he did not. He merely punished the student for violating the rules of the school, which to my mind is within his rights.
Was the web site downloadable on school PCs? If so, this is no different than a student being suspended for distributing an obscene parody pamphlet, or running down the halls yelling obscene things about the assistant principle.
Freedom of speech is certainly sacrosanct, but this boy's freedom of speech was not violated - he did not have to take down his web site (though he may have of his own accord).
In the same way, you have every right to put up an independent parody web site criticizing your employer, but don't expect to keep your job when they find out.
-josh
Excellent, it's about time this happened.
Hopefully there'll now be parody of the idiots taking down the site. Making fun of schools and the usually stuffy attitudes they have is something I strongly encourage in children.
While free speech is protected by the First Amendment, there must be drawn a limit to which this umbrella of protection is stopped. That limit is drawn where your speech (or in this case, writings) causes harm to another individual.
A philosopher once said "I may not agree with what you're saying, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" and this holds true in most cases. We have the First Amendment not to protect the conformists and conservatives in our society, but to protect those who hold minority or contriversial opinions that would otherwise be persecuted for their beliefs.
This is a good thing, and I fully support the student's right to exercise his rights, however in this particular case, the student has crossed the line, and was right to have his website censored by the school system. When speech causes harm, whether it be physical injuries, or mental anguish, to another person, the speaker has violated the rights of the target of the speech and therefore, not protected by the First Amendment. This is called slander or libel and is punishable by law. Just ask the National Inquirer. Deliberately spreading rumors or insulting another person is against the law and I am truly saddened at the opressive power the ACLU wields over this country's courts. I can only hope that justice will be served in an appeal.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
Think!! What the hell do you think the First Amendment is for? Is its most important purpose to allow people to say disrespectful things about their parents or something? No, its most important purpose is to allow people to disrespect the establishment. This is supposed to be a democracy. Unfortunately, schools aren't typically very democratic, despite some rather limited school councils.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Completely agreed. People are too quick to pull the lawsuit trigger in this country. The kid's parents should have given him a talking to for disrespecting the principal and accepted the suspension.
It's funny how people talk about consitiutional rights all the time, but fail to think about the spirit behind that constitution. The kid's a jerk. Maybe the kid should be made to memorize the Declaration of Independance and understand what it stood for. Then perhaps the spirit of the constitution might begin to sink in.
Not because the school had to cough up some dough, but because the value of America's educational system is being degraded day after day.
I wont put my voice behind this kid, if he wanted to voice something meaningful about the asst. principal, he would have found some better way than portraying the guy having sex with simpson, smoking marijuana and as a pedophile. These are quite harsh allegations and even if he deemed them funny, i am sure this hurts the general morale among teachers.
I am sure half of Slashdot would agree that they were better than the teachers that taught them, but then again, most of us would agree that wisdom that comes with age is ten times better than whats being taught as part of the curriculum. No wonder why people dont want to get in to the teaching profession anymore. After all, what do they get. Less money and to top it all, their own students alleging them of being a pedophile. I wouldnt be suprised if this shocks and saddens the whole teaching community as a whole
I agree that the school has nothing to do or has no power over what a student does after school. I wish the asst. principal had slapped a law suit on the kid and his parents first, rather than kicking him out of school.
My mother was a teacher, not in this country though. There are different method for teaching and some starts at the end of a cane. The parents and the kids accept this as a part of the learning process and everyone is better at the end of the day.
Rapid Nirvana