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Court Finds For Student In Web FOS Case
An anonymous reader writes "A student who brought a suit against his middle school has been awarded a settlement after two years of legal battles. USAToday reports that the suit was brought after the school leveled harsh disciplinary measures against the student, based entirely on comments made to his website guestbook." From the article: "Grayson Barber, who handled the case on behalf of the ACLU, said the school presented no evidence that Dwyer's comments were threatening or disruptive of school activities. 'Our schools should encourage debate and political engagement rather than punishing students who provide a forum for free expression.'"
first is that the school acts in loco parentis while the student is traveling to/from school. so, if a teacher sees a kid jaywalking on her way home, the school may legally respond to that
the other distinction has to do with published policies. if the school has a policy that says "you get suspended for violating city ordinances", and then the kid gets caught jay walking, that's that.
this case seems pretty cut and dried, doesn't it though? the kid was operating at home, so the school's traditional in loco parentis is inapplicable, and they wouldn't state a policy. it doesn't get clearer than that... of course, IANAL...
I guess this is to strongly discourage similar incidents in the future - if it was a lighter fine, the school (or other schools) would be tempted to do the same thing time and again.
;)
A large fine would largely be detrimental to such actions.
More importantly, it becomes imperative that such offenses to the very fundamental fabric of free speech should not be treated lightly, no matter what the situation. Else it would not be undermining the incident, it would be undermining free speech.
And sometimes, people only understand force and authority and a large fine reinforces the importance and gravity of the situation, and at the same time showing that such incidents will not be dealt with lightly.
Precedence in law is a wonderful thing.
Eh, I got into a fight with a shop professor once. He had the habit of whacking people on the hand with a ruler when he got pissed at them. I was taking fencing lessons at a time, so what I did was take my own ruler and parry. We ended up exchanging a few blows, then he grabbed my ruler and I grabbed his. He ended up with both, proceeded to hit me over the head with one of them (don't remember if he kept a grip on the other), at which point I decked him.
The principal decided that I was in the right because he hit me first, so I got a written apology. Surprisingly I ended up with a B in that class, the hard feelings only lated two weeks or so.
Possibly if takedown request to the individual messages that contained threatening speach were ignored only then would there be a case against the forum owner.
Threatening speach should be handled by police. If it was truly threatening and the boy were arrested, I'm sure no one would be supporting him right now, much less the ACLU. In this case, however, the school decided that it's own more stringent rules trumped law and they metered punishement without so much as a trial.
If it weren't a state-run institution, if our young citizens weren't compelled to attend school by law and if the offense had actually occured on school grounds then these punishments may have been acceptable. But when a citizen is compelled by law to be a member of an institution and then that instutution can institute rules that extend to all other aspects of the citizen's life and then when those rule can supercede state and federal law, well, then you have a problem.
TW
I got suspended 10 days one year for being disruptive. I didn't stand for the pledge of allegiance once and got suspended for three days. We also had a lovely school shooting that same year and our newspaper was not allowed to report on it, according to the school. That was a repressive high school.
Believe it or not it was in Florida.
I used to have a typing teacher that would smack your fingers with a ruler. I told her not to smack my hands with the ruler. So she went out of her way to try to do it. Most of the time I got my hands out of the way fast enough that she'd smack the keyboard instead and get all pissed. She finally lost it when she went to smack my hands, hit the keyboard, I busted up laughing, and she hit me over the head. So I took the ruler, broke it in half, and threw it in trashcan. I got suspended for 3 days even after she admitted she hit me over the head with the ruler. So I went to the county, filed assault charges, dropped her class and went on with my life. The school board apologised later, and she got fired for drinking on the job about 3 months after that. They still eventually charged me for the cost to replace the ruler.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
That sounds like a fair chunk of change, but it's really not. In real terms of what the city could do with that money: pave 30 feet of two lane road (using immigrant labor), pay a few maintaince guys for a year (and their pensions), pay a newish DA for a year, provide a decent computer lab... It's a slap on the hand, and in the broad scope of things, almost insignifigant. At least they'll be a little more hesitant to grab out of the Civil Liberties cookie jar... Maybe.
On the bright side, because of the UCLA, they've just paid for his higher education and maybe a decent car--depending on what he wants to study. He'll make more buckaroos and get taxed for it, and they'll have it back in 30 years or so, assuming he dosen't move. And that's priceless, I think.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
You'd think that, wouldn't you?
But it really depends on whether or not they have a "code of conduct" clause in their student handbook.
Incidentally, IANAL, but I was disciplined in high school for making a website that criticized a fellow student at the school. Rather, I was disciplined for viewing the website, and fell prey to a rarely-invoked clause about viewing webpages with profanity in them, and for printing it out to show people. They did say they could do nothing to me because I made it at home--and my vice-principal was a lawyer, so perhaps there's something to that...
In any case, they can nail you on a small thing and enforce maximum punishment for something like that. Normal punishment for what I did was to have your computer privileges taken away for a week. I was banned from school computers for the rest of the school year and received two Saturday detentions.
Like I said, maximized penalties based on minor infractions. Like my senior year when, while I was involved in a public dispute with the school board and administration about their underhanded and corrupt tactics on a planned schedule change, I was suspended for going into the girls bathroom.
Course, I was with two junior girls at the time.
Oh high school.
--Petey
Does anyone remember that big deal that happened in New York where students were told not to start personal websites (MySpace and the like). Here, I found the Slashdot article:4 3&tid=95
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/25/23552
Now, I know one can make the argument that these are different situations, but they both deal with a school's right to compel their students to change what they do outside of school, specifically on the Internet. The other large difference is that this is a public school and the other school was Catholic, but this really shouldn't matter outside of school. Schools should have no right, Catholic or public, to compel their students to take down personal blogs, much less self-maintained websites. To add another two cents to my already tall stack, a middle school should be encouraging the growth of a mind who has already written and maintained his own website before he turned 15, just eight years ago this student probably would have been considered nothing less than a genius and encouraged, no matter the contense of the site... just my two cents...
I like suggestions, but I don't like contributing towards them.
Unfortunately, that means the taxpayers.
Now, while it can be argued that the idiots who voted for the school board officials who decided to suspend this student deserve to pay that settlement, I don't think the entire school board electorate should.
On the assumption that the settlement will come out of future real-estate taxes that fund the school system, those who can prove they did not vote for the idiots should be exempt from contributing to the settlement. No one is giving up a secret ballot here -- one can chose between anonymity and a refund and decide what matters more (though I think one would be proud to prove they didn't vote for an idiot).
Yes, yes, this requires secret receipts for votes, and tax levies become a bit complex, but hey, that's what computers are for.
You could've hired me.
Oh ... they get the point all right. The problem is that these people are far more concerned about their public image than the quality of education afforded the students at their fine institution. And that problem is very widespread and has to do with our educators being more politician than educator.
A large corporation can become so topheavy with middle management (synonymous with "administration" in educational parlance) that it fails to maintain sufficient productivity and goes out of business. Or maybe it will go through bankruptcy, reorganize, and come out of it a leaner, meaner organization. Schools, on the other hand, have no intrinsic negative feedback mechanism to provide a penalty for poor judgment. Rather, if their little empire isn't big enough to suit them, they complain bitterly about being "underfunded", demand additional tax money to "improve the educational experience of our children" and then go hire some more administrators.
Really, it's not hard to figure out why the American public education system is in such a shambles.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Yes that is true. But putting a black mark on a student's record wrongfully will get the school sued and the school will lose, especially if the student didn't fight back. Its all about protecting one's self from bodily harm. When schools harbor a culture of violence, they bear some responsibility when a student gets hurt.