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.

Comments

Re:Not sure this is a good decision

[phil reed]

He merely punished the student for violating the rules of the school, which to my mind is within his rights.

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

In my opinion...

[TDScott]

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>

Public Education Can Only Tolerate So Much

[weston]

Hate to say it, folks, but I'm slightly on the principals side.

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 ... 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.

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).

--

Re:Public Education Can Only Tolerate So Much

[ryanr]

I'm not talking about appeals. I'm talking about things like ... well, distributing pictures of the principal having sex with Marge Simpson.

Homer Simpson. (Doh! MMmmmmm. Floor Pie!)

Repeatedly talking about their penis in the classroom. Making a hobby of reducing a girl in the room to tears. Free speech, yes.


Hmm... no, sounds like disrupting class and harrasment to me, not free speech.

What's the last resort a teacher has with a recalcitrant student?

Boot them out of class if they do it in class.

Or a principal?
Recalcitrant principal? Sue them, apparantly. A number of people posting to this thread seem to have the right idea. The principal abused his power by taking an issue outside of school, and making it a school issue. He should have pursued legal recourse outside of the school.

Nothing,

Nothing if they do it outside of school.

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.

Say, because you don't like something they did outside of school?

Free Speech is guaranteed to citizens in law. Free education isn't an unalienable right;

It's not in the list of inalienable rights. However, I have no choice about paying taxes to fund education, and I'm required by law to make sure my kids attend some sort of school. That's a pretty strong endorsement from the law in my mind that we're supposed to receive an education.

I have no sympathy for teachers (principal in this case) who aren't willing to give kids the rights they are entitled to, in order to make their jobs easier. I do have sympathy for what people get paid in the public school system, and I appreciate their sacrifice. Not enough to let them trample people's rights, though.

Re:Sad.

[mwalker]

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 /.

Re:Censors Rights

[MAXOMENOS]

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?

Ah shut up.

:)

ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.

Off-campus is off-campus

[Eric Green]

I, too, have been a school teacher. I daresay that I probably taught students equally as tough as yours, given that I taught in an inner-city school in Houston and in the "worst" school in the Red River School District (that was the one where 1/3rd of my students were there because the judge had ordered them to attend school as part of juvenile probation).

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

He Wronged the Assistant Principal, NOT the School

[searleb]

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.

Censors Rights

[wardomon]

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!

A matter of jurisdiction

[DunbarTheInept]

The problem here is not that the Principal was incensed. He had every right to be. The kid was engaging in what amounts to slander. The problem is that the school overstepped its jurisdiction when it tried punishing a completely out of school offense by using its in-school athority over the kid. That's a BIG ethical no-no. If the principal wanted to pursue the matter as an ordinary individual slighted by an ordinary kid, and take whatever legal action such a situation permits (which probably isn't much because the kid is just a kid), then I'd be on his side. As it is, the Principal used his position of authority to engage in bully tactics. If this incident is indicitive of the principal's sense of ethics, I think I might understand why that kid doesn't like him.

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.