Slashdot Mirror
School Power Over Student Web Speech?
Petey_Alchemist asks: "In the wake of the Pope John XIII student weblogging ban, the online lives of students are once again being examined by their academic institutions. News outlets are covering a series of recent events--most notably the expulsion of a Fisher College sophomore (who also happened to be President of the Student Government) after he posted in a 'controversial' Facebook group. Facebook, for those of you who don't know, is an incredibly popular social networking site for American college students. The fact that you must have a college email account to join provides some modicum (re: illusion) of privacy, but doesn't keep faculty or administrative members from joining and patrolling the website.
Bottom line: Facebook, Pope John XIII, and other online student speech cases are popping up all over the place yet no case defining the amount of control a school has over a student based on that student's web speech has come before the Supreme Court. When will this happen? Moreover, what will be the result when it finally does?"
The administrators just don't want students blogging about the steamy sex lives they never had. It's jealously, plain and simple.
Frantic, hot, recursive wget'd jealousy.
God was not available for comment, however.
"Everything worth innovating today will go to court tomorrow."
That's why I go to a state school.
Error: Id10t detected
A student at the school I attend was recently expelled because she posted photos on a public webpage of herself drinking. The school found out about it (I think an IT guy was surfing and searched for my school name on a free photosharing site), and the girl was expelled.
The lesson: don't be stupid about what you post on publicly viewable websites, such as blogs. You never know who's going to read it.
"Scud Storm!" -- Jeremy of PurePwnage.com
Preface: IANAL, but I played one for years in Mock Trial.
It's really quite interesting to see how much disciplinary latitude schools have. The trend that I discovered--after we actually tried a case in Mock Trial regarding an infraction of the student handbook--is that, generally speaking, a student handbook is the rule of law for a school (barring any outright infringements on students rights.)
Therefore, schools have quite a bit of latitude in terms of punishment if they have a "detrimental conduct" clause. I myself was disciplined essentially for posting critical comments of a fellow student on my own webpage, as I posted earlier.
What I find really interesting, though, is the role the Internet is going to play in our public lives from now on. I wrote an extensive post in the other thread, but to sum it up...well, if today's journalists are willing to scour through a high school yearbook of Samuel Alito in order to find hints about his political beliefs, is it so hard to believe that my generation (speaking as a college student) will find themselves hamstrung by acts of folly conducted on the Internet? It's quite easy to connect to my pyromaniac website to porn and warez websites. Never mind my blog, livejournal, slashdot and assorted forum accounts.
It's an electronic goldmine for the next generation of muck raking journalists to sort through--with ever more powerful search technology.
We'll become a generation where we have to admit--because we've seen the electronic evidence--that, for example, our next President was, as a teenager, a Green Day listening, Microsoft hating, MySpace blogging, whiny, self absorbed git.
Wait 'til that shock hits...maybe then people will really self-censor. Today, you've got expelled college students. Tomorrow...e-scandals?
--Petey
No matter what the circumstances, no matter what the fora, and no matter what, I think that Freedom of Speech is to be protected. Any attempt at stifling it with whatever justification is the first step towards a slippery slope leading to authoritarian rule and erosion of all kinds of privacy and freedoms...albeit this could take many decades to actually happen.
If the erosion of freedoms starts now, I fear that by the time I die, the world will be much, much different from the heydays of the internet when everything was open and without restrictions...I fear that we will have a very strict and monitored society where your every move will be logged and your every thought will be scrutinized for compliance with the dominant peoples' satisfaction.
As far as I'm concerned, these schools can do whatever they want. So far, these are all private school that we're hearing about. They can do whatever they want, that's their right. As soon as it's a public school, though, then we have problems. When the government starts telling you what you can and can't say, that's infringing on your first amendment rights. The school would lose any case like this in a heartbeat.
:)
But the solution to this problem is simple -- if you're a student at one of these pro-brainwashing schools, leave. Go somewhere where freedom and academic integrity are the core values -- not "do whatever we tell you to do". Because frankly, college is not about doing what you're told, it's about learning, exploring new ideas, and being Free. If these institutions that censor their students claim to care about education, they're lying. Let them brainwash their students, while those who can think for themselves go elsewhere. Capitalism saves the day again
My other car is first.
Uhmm. Here, professors join the facebook and add their students as friends. They'll announce this behavior in class, and brag of their numbers. It's hardly a covert op.
Also, the facebook isn't a blog, it's a social networking service.
While we're at it, there isn't much that you could do in facebook that would be all that damaging. Naked pictures are banned... other than that, you could join a group with a controversial name, but there isn't much in that. I'm a member of "My name's Justin biotch." Lots of people are members of "I went to a public school, bitch." Not here, since most of the kids here are wealthy Ivy Leaguers, born with a silver spoon in their mouths, but, you know, whatever.
I worry more about what I say on Slashdot.
To be honest, I think this could happen very soon and I both think and hope that the Supreme Court will be on the side of free speech. Everyone in the United States has a right to free speech, but we also have consequences to bear for taking out freedom of speech too far, in public schools I imagine there will be fewer to no free speech restrictions. However, in private schools, I think they will put a harsh ban on violating their rules if they have any. I imagine that few (private) schools will actually enact AND progressively enforce these rules, but if they do, the punishment will be harsh, like suspension if the pupil does it twice, and expulsion for a third offense. Naturally, the first time will just be a nice "please take the site down NOW." This topic has me baffled, still, my personal belief is that everybody should have the right to free speech, especially when it's approiate, and bad-mouthing one's school (in many cases) is not only normal, it's almost expected for students at some schools, and if a school is so bad that more than 25% of the students express extreme dislike, I also think the school should re-evaluate its priorities.
I like suggestions, but I don't like contributing towards them.
Seems like schools are spending more time watching what students are doing online then watching them as they travel home at night on buses with all the crazies.
It must have been students like you because of whom the blogs were taken down.
sarchasm
There have been a lot of cases like this in the public school system in the last few years; when they go to trial the student usually wins. This was just today: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-11-07-schoo l-website-suit_x.htm
The end result of all this is that private schools will become another government agency restricted by law from abridging free speech despite their non-public nature.
Free Speech is one of those things that is widely misunderstood. It is simply the ability to speak freely and without government interference. The government is restricted from barring you from exercising your right to speak.
That does not mean that you have that right everywhere. Your rights end, goes the phrase, where mine begin. Private property is one space where you are restricted in your speech. Public property, on the other hand, is where you ought to be unrestricted. Private sector entities (individuals, companies, and organizations) have the right to bar you from activities of the entity if they do not approve of your speech. This used to be an inherent right.
If we force private institutions to accept any and all free speech, despite the fact that it may injure, slander, or be antithetical to the institutions' charter, then we are in essence forcing them to act as a government agency, i.e. statute-restricted non-discriminatory agency. The institutions do not have the right to act as they deem appropriate, but must act in accord with governmental regulation.
Constitutional Amendments like the ERA were big steps in usurping the rights of private institutions. If we follow this line of thinking through, where schools ought to be prevented from punishing students who break school rules, then we can see that the end result is that schools and government move closer to each other and the value of private schooling is diminished.
Will it go that far? Hopefully not, and the school will realize what a mistake it is making. However, the odds are more likely that the growth of government will continue unabated and it will absorb all educational institutions as time goes by, piece by piece, right by right.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Is it me or do these busybody administrators raise the level of comments from any other BS you read on the net to newsworthy by their own actions?
Think of all the people who've made themselves essentially unhirable due to flame wars they started 15 years ago on Usenet. I don't hire anyone without a thorough Googling.
No matter what court rules which way, freethinkers will be able to prevail over the facists. Maybe not today, this year, or this decade, but eventually, more intelligent opinions will hold sway over the arbitrary views of authoritarian control freaks. Or so I hope. Am I too optimistic?
Software freedom...I love it!
The student in this case absolutely forgot the 11'th commandment
11. "Cover thine own ass"
He didn't. He did it all out in the open. If he had kept his little conspiracy among "friends" and at least used an anonymous website instead of broadcasting his plan and name to all-and-sundry, then maybe his scheme might have succeeded. But in this case, he's learned a lesson. Don't Get Caught. If anonymity worked for the Federalist Papers, then it should have been good enough for him. Why he didn't use even an alias (because the website _required_ him to be a verified student), is beyond me.
About his scheme: If the university cop was truly harrassing students, there were _far better_ ways to nail the guy than enticing other students to "get arrested" for fun and profit.
--
BMO
When these Future Bloggers of America get into the work environment, they will get smack down for hanging out their company's dirty laundry for public display as well. Free speech belongs to the person who owns the press and can afford a good attorney.
Tech Public Policy stuff
It's been my understanding that a private school can kick anyone out at any time for any reason as long as you can't prove it was discrimination of some sort. Has anyone heard something to the contrary?
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Here is an interesting article about a site called whototake.com, which was started by James, a student I know at Fullerton College, where I teach. It was a place for students to post online reviews of their professors. Of course, when students rated me highly, I considered it fair, and when they gave me bad ratings, I considered them extremely misguided :-) The sad thing is that James was forced to take down the site due to the threat of a lawsuit. I may have been unhappy with some of the things said about me, but I would never sink so low as to use the threat of a lawsuit against a young college student as a way of suppressing his right to free speech.
Find free books.
At my university, several students got alcohol violations for having alcoholic beverages in their pictures on Facebook...
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
The school is not barring anyone's freedom of speech. That's the first thing to realize here. The student exercised the right.
However, the school, having set forth in its student handbook the rules of student conduct and the prescribed penalties, has the right to enforce the rules against the students who agreed to them upon admission to the school. The student has the right, too, to decide to leave the school if the rules are so ornery or the penalties so harsh that he cannot abide by them. In such a case, the student cannot be punished by the school for any act, because he is not a member of the organization any longer.
Governments cannot make such rules (though they do so frequently). Private organizations, whether a large school or just a couple of friends, can decide the rules of inclusion into the group. If, as you may read below in my other post, the government decides to take that right away from a group (in this case forcing the college to accept any student speech), then it is an erosion of the rights despite its possible positive effects.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
When I was young I thought USA was a really cool country. For whatever reason, probably because of pop culture export, USA seemed great and my own country (Sweden) boring. I remember a kid on my block was really into the marines, he had a US flag above his bed. He knew lots of presidents, pretty good for someone not native to the country.
Then I grew older. I realized no country is inherently cool, when you look at the society and politics and not just action movies. USA seemed reasonable though, I remember a history (or geography) lesson in elementary school when a teacher described the basic ideas of the constitution, and the emigration from Sweden->America in the previous centuries. Inspiring.
Fast forward til now. Do I awe you? No, because in my opinion (which will be modded down really freaking fast), your country is going downhill. You are teaching religion as science, I don't even think fundamentalist muslims do that. Then you sort-of ban freedom of speech by forbidding blogging, of all stupid things to ban (whatever happened to land of the free?), introduce laws like DMCA, and are actively trying to destroy the whole worlds intellectual property laws.
Think about it.
Regards,
Swedish citizen.
Guys:
I do not believe it. I just do not believe it, and if it is true the students at that University are getting exactly what they deserve. Every damn one of them has a yellow streak a foot wide down their back. The administration can say what they like, but expulsion or sanctions over a free speech item is just not an option. Where are the protests, where are the sit-ins where you roast hot dogs on a fire started in the school President's wastebasket (it better be a metal one). The real power in a University lies in the student body, NOT the administration.
Tom
Class of '65
University of California, Berkeley
As another poster metioned, so far these are all private schools. That means that the parents are paying a LOT of money for little Johnnie or Suzie to attend. Surely if the parents are unhappy, they will put their child in another school. My thought is that the dollars will win out. I do wish though, that the ACLU would make itself useful and take some of the to the Supreme Court.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
They can treat you like a child in High School. But this is College, and these are adults, why not start treating them like such? Even High schools are to restrictive.
Fascism is the greatest political ideology ever conceived. Sorry.
The real power in a University lies in the hands of the police officers who come at the beck and call of the administration to remove the expelled trespassers and vandals from the campus. Sometimes it goes peacefully, sometimes with beatings, and as you may recall, sometimes with bullets.
"...yet no case defining the amount of control a school has over a student based on that student's web speech has come before the Supreme Court."
That is because, in the vast majority of these cases, the schools involved are private, not public, institutions, and thus they are completely free to limit student speech as they see fit.
The kid suggested "eliminating"(executing) a campus police officer AND solicited others to attempt what can only be termed entrapment.
Furthermore, you don't have protections of freedom of speech with ANY organization except the government. I'm really tired of people claiming that they have "Freedom of Speech" every time they get in trouble for spouting whatever they feel like at work, or school, or on private property. EVEN FURTHER, those rights do not include liable, slander, or assault (ie, "I'm going to rape you with this baseball bat!" is not constitutionally protected speech) to name a few. There are CENTURIES of precedence on this issue.
If you RTFA: "Fisher College spokesman John McLaughlin said, ''Cameron Walker was found to be in violation of the Student Guide and Code of Conduct.""
THAT, boys and girls, is why he was expelled. It's not the fact that he had a web log (I refuse to call them blogs); it's that he threatened the life of a school employee. It's pretty fucking clear-cut to me, and I'm really tired of hearing a lot of whining about "oh, poor him". The guy did something completely unjustified and COMPLETELY stupid. He knew the consequences (especially since he was class/school president) of violating the school's code of conduct; it was a private school. His speech was not protected, and furthermore, is most likely criminal in nature.
Please help metamoderate.
But if anyone has an email address, I'd love to have it too :-)
After an investigation, the Judicial Affairs office decided to take action against Miner and, in an Oct. 13 hearing, found him guilty of violating university policy prohibiting discrimination on the basis of "sexual orientation." As "punishment" - a term university officials say they don't like to use - Miner must write a 10-page essay in which he is required to research and explain the Roman Catholic church's position on gays and lesbians.
Now that's going to backfire, big-time. Because official Vatican doctrinal documents are much closer to the student's position than what Duquesne University is putting out.
The Catholic Church is having a doctrinal crackdown on this. No more "diversity". The Apostolic Visitation (what used to called the Grand Inquisition) of US seminaries by Vatican personnel is underway right now. Some faculty members have already been canned for deviations from church doctrine.
First, I work in a public school. While we don't have a written policy on such things (currently anyway) in the incidents we have had - students posting then viewing from school, we simply block the website for school computers. Let 'em write what they want, let 'em read what they want. Just not from school. The incidents we have had have caused problems at school. Bullying, harassment, etc.. which ARE school problems and will be handled as such. Some have received counseling, disciplinary action etc.. as the situation warrants. Bottom line is that any thing posted to a public forum can and will be read. A threat to anyone is still a threat, it doesn't matter if it is posted online somewhere or spoken on school grounds or at the local hangout. Not everything can stop at the door of the school. IE underage drinking, drug use, etc.. why should online comments be any different?
Bottom line: Facebook, Pope John XIII, and other online student speech cases are popping up all over the place yet no case defining the amount of control a school has over a student based on that student's web speech has come before the Supreme Court. When will this happen? Moreover, what will be the result when it finally does?"
Any court, let alone the Supreme Court is unlikely to want to hear such a case. Isn't this is a matter of non government private contracts? When you enroll with the school you agree to abide by their rules, no matter how absurd. What could the court do? These kind of contracts have existed forever for all kinds of clubs, organizations, societies, etc.. As long as the contract doesn't violate the law itself (e.g. discriminate on the basis of race or sex) there's really nothing you can do short of telling them to fuck off and finding another school that's more sympathetic to your blogging activities.
As a matter of fact, they can. In the United States, that is, and depending on what you mean by "private." The US Constitution generally bars government from violating any number of civil rights of individuals. But private individuals, or organizations of same, are generally free to discriminate any way they please, unless (and here's the catch) it can plausibly be defined as relating to interstate commerce, in which case Congress acquires the right to make law that intervenes.
Generally it would be a violation of the right to assemble for the government to put restrictions on how people can associate privately, and a violation of the right to free speech if government tried to interfere with people calling each other "spics" or any other term of opprobium they please, in a private setting.
Where you might have become confused is, first, by the fact that public organizations, e.g. public schools, transit agencies, et cetera, are bound by the same Constitutional rules as the government itself. And, furthermore, government is certainly within its rights to, as a matter of policy, deny public assistance to private organizations Congress finds objectionable, and Congress frequently does just that.
Finally, things like the Fair Housing Act prohibit discrimination in any activity that can plausibly (or even with a stretch) be defined as commercial. So it's not illegal, if you privately sell your home, to refuse to sell it to black people, but it is illegal if you are "in the business" of selling or renting -- and that is defined very broadly -- or if you use a broker, et cetera. This is all justified under the Constitution as relating to Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce.
So Congress has no power to ban the Ku Klux Klan, nor can it ban its meeting in private homes in which signs with racial epithets are posted, and the KKK can completely exclude blacks from membership, and if it runs a boarding house for its members it can exclude blacks from there, too. But the KKK is not likely to be granted tax-exempt status, and is not likely to receive permission to meet on public land, e.g. in a public school, and if it applies for a public grant to promote its activies I expect the application will be turned down.
Private universities are frequently "blackmailed" by the federal government into various policies considered in the public good, from allowing both sexes and all races to enroll (although this tends not to be applied against female-only or black-only colleges) to allowing military recruiters on campus. This works mostly because even private universities receive enormous chunks of their budget (like, 40% or so) from the federal government via grants of one kind or another.
facism, that's what.
Everytime censorship is adopted, it's to muffle those who were right...
People speaking out against the Solviet's, Nazi's, Slavery, Segregation, etc. etc.
You can say whatever you want, but it can and will be used against you.
A couple of guidelines any sense thinking person would follow:
1. Don't take pictures of yourself doing illegal things. Sure you do them mainly for attention, but only for those present. It's much eaiser to say it didn't happen.
2. Try not to say things you regret. Think about the future when you're going to become president and all you ever said over the internet is now on the front page.
3. Realize that you can say anything you want (Freedom of Speech will prevail) but also realize that you are speaking aloud and may have feedback and consequences to what you say, always.
I know that at my school, also catholic high school, the administration bullied some kid into 'inviting' them to facebook so that they could comb through everybody's profiles. Multiple people were called to the front office, apparently to answer for pictures or written accounts of drinking, sex, and drugs. I can't really say that I'm sorry for them -- there is no such thing as privacy on the internet. At the same time, the administration should find something better to do. I don't take sides so much simply because I try to stay out of facebook/xanga/livejournal/myspace. I think most of them epitomize the stupidity and superficiality of your average teenage girl.
I might add that I have been personally attacked by a facebook group and an individual known on facebook as "Thomas Torquemada." Not only is there an illusion of privacy, but also of anonymity.
Maybe it's part of the Church's seeming tendency to live vicariously through others. Seems like that's what some of our resident priests do during confession according to my girlfriend.
I am somewhat disturbed by the popular tendency to interpret the guarantee our Founding Fathers made of "The Right to Free Speech" to mean that the government is supposed to force private entities to allow absolutely anything to be said, in many cases using their own media or means. What it means, the only thing it means, is that the government is not allowed to suppress anyone's speech. Mainly the idea therein is that the government isn't supposed to be able to pull the favorite trick of governments past and present the world over of not allowing anyone to criticise them.
"Freedom of Speech" has absolutely nothing to do with whether a non-government body chooses to remove a member from its ranks for whatever arbitrary reason it so chooses. The kicked out person could try to sue for all sorts of reasons, I suppose, but he certainly couldn't claim that his First Amendment rights were violated, since the only party able to do that is the government.
If the erosion of freedoms starts now[snip]
Whose freedom are we talking about, exactly? The student's or the school administration's? It's all too easy to fall into the trap of looking at rights and freedoms from only one perspective. Individual liberties often cannot be unilaterally expanded into infinity without squelching the equally-to-be-protected rights of other parties.
It wasn't just a critique. He posted a suggestion that someone stage getting arrested for the purpose of getting a campus police officer in trouble. Obviously, context is key, but in the absence of any contextual information to the contrary, it sounds like the school's response was appropriate, assuming of course that it was otherwise consistent with their policies.
Anyone have more context?
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
Well first off, the US really is in deep dodo. Especially economics wise, (the debt is reaching Argentine levels) but unfortunately we will probably take down europe with us.
But in the big picture, I think what you are seeing is that the US is going thru the birthing pains of the information age. All the people who were used to controlling information are panacking, and the peoples of the world who have been exposed to US cluture via the internet are suffering culture shock all over the planet - causing many to lash out at us, and a lot of islamic reactionisim.
In fact, something similar happened during the industrial revolution as new transportation technology caused US, inidian, and Mexican cultures to mingle like never before and completely clash. Not to mention the thought of the plantation masters who freaked at the thought of loosing their labor force as labor in the North became mobile. Now, information is becomming commoditized and large industries are threatened with complete loss of control. (over information, implying the death of the copyright system)
We haven't had a transformation like this since the civil war. IMHO, it's just the beginning and all freakin hell is about to break loose.
It was 90-9.. One senator didn't vote. Just so you know.
There's a difference between hate speech and free speech. I was recently the victim of some moderately defamatory stuff about my sexual orientation that was posted on a non-campus site that many members of my college read. I did get an apology from the person involved, but had she not apologized, I would definitely have pressed for disciplinary action. And I do feel that it was justified, as her actions threatened the well-being and trust of the community, even though they weren't posted directly to an on-campus or official site.
I support the right of free speech and the ability to post -critical- things about anyone or anything, but hate speech is hardly protected speech as interpreted by the SCOTUS.
-Deliberately being an AC here.
What business is it of their's what you do in your spare time? Their concern should be your education; nothing else.
Furthermore, you don't have protections of freedom of speech with ANY organization except the government. I'm really tired of people claiming that they have "Freedom of Speech" every time they get in trouble for spouting whatever they feel like at work, or school, or on private property.
First, let me say that i agree with most of your post, but one little thing in there, namely the school, really bothers me. I am not talking about private schools or colleges, but public schools. Every child under a certain age is required by law to attend school; therefore, don't schools count as part of government?
Right now, I am currently attending a school where basic rights outlined in the Bill of Rights are being eliminated completely. The right to free speech, assembly, and petition, as well as the fact that you are innocent until proven guilty are all being trampled.
For example, our principal regulates the school newspaper, and recently took out an article that criticizes the school administration. Also, a student was given in school suspension for writing a opinion paper comparing our administration to nazi germany and the gestapo.
Last month a student was expelled from school for writing "there's a bomb in the bathrrom" on a calculator. Another student told the teacher, who then took the calculator and reported him. The student was expelled from school for writing six words on a graphing calcualtor without even showing it to anybody.
One last exmple that I'm not sure is in the bill of rights, but is bound to be somewhere, is freedom of dress. Our public school forbids any male student to have a mustache or beard, as well as regulating hair to above the eyebrows, earlobes, and collar. Also, men are not allowed to display any piercings or wear sleeveless shirts. None of these restrictions, however apply to girls. They are simply forced to wear "modest" clothing, which can range from miniskirt and skimpy tanktop to T-shirt and long pants depending on which official you ask.
Anyway, that's my rant, I'm completley fed up with our administration and what's even worse is no one seems to care!
When they learn how badly they are being cheated by those those
charged with providing their education, I would expect open rebellion.
Yeah, the one with the funny hat.
I go to a large public school and wonder if this could have happened here. You see, we have an interesting judicial system when it comes to kicking people out of school for violating school code. (Which may or may not be a violation of real law, as seen in this case.) If you violate school code, regardless of weather it would land you in front of the cops or not, and the violation is severe enough that it could get you kicked out of school, you come before a panel of students and administrators. The way the panel is set up is that the students (5 of them) can outvote the administrators (4 of them). We hear the case of the student (they get a chance to tell their side) and decide if they broke the code. If we decide they did, then we get to decide on the punishment also. We could decide not to expel them, or to expel them for years. Either way, I doubt this kinda stuff would fly if you had students deciding cases like this one....
You would have to be an absolute retard to think "Let's get that guy fired" means "Let's get that guy killed".
Because, as you put it, "fired" has a strong connotation. It conjures up images of a "firing squad", and "firing a gun", and, christ, I can't even go on. You're an idiot.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
(n/t)
I keep forgetting that you have to insert tags for breaks...doh!
It's interesting actually. To prove a point, I looked up a random girl I had just met, and within 20 minutes between the school's website and facebook, had her name (off of a face, year, and knowing the first two letters), phone number, dorm (although not room), birthday, email, and about a dozen more pictures of her. Fortunately for her, I'm not interested in stalking her. But a person needs to think through whether they want to have that information available. It can't be hard to get on facebook as a non-college person, all you need is the email address for like 30 minutes.
The arrogance of universities is nothing short of incredible. It amazes me that administrators and professors often see themselves as "god-like" when they are really just prima donnas in a service industry funded by tax dollars and tuition fees. As someone who worked their way (and incurred debt) through undergrad and grad school, I had no tolerance for bad service of any sort and conveyed that to several professors when it was appropriate, reminding them why they were there. To see these same types want to impose control over the personal lives of students is disturbing. Hopefully students will stand up to this and rightly tell their schools to bugger off and get back to concentrating on academics, their core business and reason for existence.
I was recently threatened with suspension and/or expulsion from my (British A-level) College when one of the members of staff discovered that I've written less than....promotional comments about one of my physics teachers (Sure...uranium 238 is fissile...I believe you) on my livejournal, along with a draft copy of a letter I'd written to the school.
:).
Also, one of the people in the year above got suspended for creating [schoolname]sucks.com - 'tis mad, but common.
Hence, my blog is now friends-only
My UID is prime. Is yours?
"(I refuse to call them blogs)"
That'll show 'em! Friend, step away from your television, take your automobile to the nearest aeroplane portal, and don't forget to stop at the automatic teller machine (did you remember your personal identification number?) We need to join Master SuperBanana in this grand protest. Don't worry, I've sent him electronic mail to let him know you're coming.
Information (good or bad) = Knowledge
Censorship of information can only lead to a lack of knowledge. The less information a person has the more ignorant a person is. How can a place that promotes ignorance be considered a place of education?
Sounds O.K. to me.
I'm glad my state doesn't allow school administrators to over-rule the choices made by parents. If a parent doesn't want their kid suspended, and its not anything short of a felony, then the school has no business in the lives of their students. Quite frankly these do-gooder school administrators that pull these stunts are just as damaging as pedophile rapists. Instead of raping little kids, these thugs are killing the spirits of their students. That is not to mention the motivations behind these stunts, which is typically driven around knocking off certain academic threats so that their personal favourites earn the honours at graduation time. Sick people. Don't they have anything better to do, like perhaps run an academics program?
I know here at The Ohio State University, a couple of students who live in the dorms told me that they have had disciplinary action against them due to photographs on the site showing them engaging in underage drinking. I was completely and entirely shocked.
And so America continues it's slide into fascism.
No talking without official permission.
Interrogation without trial (Guantanamo)
I could go on and on
Land of the free ? About as free as fucking China.
Current pope is Benedictus XVI...
http://www.vatican.va/
Unless the journal contains slanderous comments people should leave well alone.
I have an LJ which work know about but only one idiot has persisted to snipe at it and me. I've not rectififed that problem. My personal life has no bearing on my professional life so work should know better and leave it the **** alone.
This is an infringement on my freedom of speech. I'm not even mentioning names or dropping any obvious hints.
There have been many times when dealing with people that I wished I could kiss my own butt goodbye
You gotta fight..... for your right... to ffaaaaaacebooook!
o.0
Kids nowwadays, why don't they go outside and take good old fashioned mind altering drugs, instead of flashing their midriffs all about the intarwebnet, they could be doing it for real outside!
I guess it was too hard for the proffs to concentrate, and the popes blogroll was getting far too steamy...
pikka
please type the word in this image: wolves
random letters - if you are visually impaired, please email us at pater@slashdot.org
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
but for the record we have facebook in the uk as well. As far as i'm aware, it is available in oxford, cambridge, durham ans st. andrews universities - but only widely used here in oxford.
e^(i pi)+2 bottles hanging on the wall, one falls off and now its
when i whent to college the teacher told me if your worried about talking to the teacher cause hes in charge he's not he works for YOU. in school you are the client your parents taxes or whateever have paid for it.
biggest secret in schools today don't let the kids know they have a right to there education they might actually ask for a decent one.
to any kids at school or college make sure you get your moneys worth.
i wish someone had told me this 15 years ago
I just wanted to point out that the school is Pope John the XXIII not XIII (as was in the original article)
After reading the article about Fischer College I think he should be expelled.
Yes you have the Freedom of Speech in America, but you can't yell, "Fire" in a theater. This guy appears to have made a post nothing short of slanderous and inciteful comments with designs on entrapment of the officer.
You can bitch about free speech, but there are some kinds of free speech that just aren't worth defending. Political Free Speech is a good thing. But I don't believe there is a fundamental right to Free Speech when it comes to public swearing or Nazi/KKK conventions in public calling for the destruction of the Nigger Race as they so love to call it.
Ravings of a lunatic do not need to be protected. But we have to know who the lunatics are.
Could you apologize for me too? I'm feeling pretty lazy today, and just can't be bothered to apologize for things that are aren't my doing, my responsibility, nor my problem.
While many, if not all, of the cases to date involve private schools, there is more to these cases then the rights of the private school to do such. We all can agree if this was a public school no one would question that the groups were in the wrong, since the schools are public institutions. It is reasons like this why a public school cannot ban certain groups from using the facilities just because of their racial, sexual, or other such makeup. (This has actually been tested by courts in many cases, if you make the school available for some you must make it available for all.)
Now, we have a private school. Normally, I would agree with the school preventing students from access to these websites while on school property and using school computers and the like. The fact is though, this is not the case. These schools are have been enforcing these rules even when students are away from the school and not using anything school related. Pope John XIII didn't even say it was limited to school related material, but all material available. Of course, they attempted to use the spin that it was for the children's protection. However, anyone who has been online (or saw Datelines recent "scare story") know that most online predators use chat room and instant messaging to prowl on the young ones, not blogs and community sites.
In the case of the Fisher College student, if he was stating factual information concerning the individuals in question, then he was doing nothing more then amateur reporting. Had the story been printed in a newspaper or had he been a source (even non-anonymous) to a news story we probably would not be talking about this. This is a bit more twisted in they are not even trying to hide the fact that they suspened a student for writing things that might be shining a light on dark truths at the school.
In the end, I believe that the question of private schools (and corporations) censoring information might come down to a court ruling; however, I believe it might be some time before SCOTUS hears such a case. When they do I expect the following, the schools in question being private organizations, have the right to their own means for controlling services and information distributed through their own computer resource; however, without some pre-acknowledge contract that clearly outlines the limitations of the students in a way as to let them know that such activity is not allowed away from these situations the organizations no longer have this control. Of course they could surprise me and say the organizations have no control outside of their own computer resources.
To expand on this, I believe SCOTUS will use Boy Scouts as an example stating that as a private organization they have the right to deny certain individuals the ability to serve as scout masters (and quite possibly as scouts themselves). The debate becomes a bit more of a problem when you consider private schools and the voucher possibility. At this point, private schools are to some degree being provided with their money from government and the question becomes a lot more important. I believe in the ultimate ruling that most people will like SCOTUS might say: We believe the freedom of speech is an ultimate right of the people of this country as demonstrated by it being a part of the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights. This Right should not be violated by an institution public or private in a way that prevents individuals from free expression while not violating other laws (i.e. the "fire in a crowded theater" idea or trade secret laws) and non-disclosure agreements.
In the end, of the three most likely responses, I believe we will probably get the half-way one, where SCOTUS would say, you can control speech at your institution and distributed through your network or using your own equipment (computers given to students for home use), but outside of that the individuals have an expectation of the Right to Free Speech. I believe it is also important for the court to make this case in the rights for minors, because it seems to be the general few of adults in power positions (i.e. principals, managers, teachers, etc.) that minors are not entitled to the same rights and protections of adults (which is quite untrue).
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Right, but imagine if we had written and pictoral evidence of Bush doing all of those things, evidence even the most diehard Bush fan couldn't ignore.
it would be claimed that the accusations were 'politically motivated'.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
It's pretty clear that he was not threatening to kill this guy. 'eliminate' is not a synonym for 'execute'.
However, he was a complete idiot to threaten to 'set up' a police officer. Forget free speech, he's lucky if he doesn't get prosecuted for that. I'm sure that would be a serious crime, at least here in the UK. Good luck to him crying 'constitutional rights' to the cops after he 'conspired' to 'set up' one of their colleagues.
The kid must be pretty shortsighted to think noone but his classmates was going to see this (or that they would, but it was perfectly acceptable free speech).
my password really is 'stinkypants'
At least in the U.S. Private entities can regulate speech in whatever fashion they deem appropriate.
http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm :)
See article 19, and then go back to being geeks
Case closed, its as easy as that...
must we go over this?
Freedom of Speech does not give you the right to be heard on whatever medium you wish. You cannot force a private party to act as a vehicle for your speech. You cannot even force a public entity.
You have the right to speak your mind all you want. You do not have the right to force others to carry your speech for you. End of story.
I realize not everyone is Catholic, but really. It's roughly equivalent to misspelling John F. Kennedy or Winston Churchill's name.
reminds me of a time a guy at my school went to a crazy party...and the next morning his ex-girlfriend's livejournal had a photo of him pashing another guy...and no-one cared.
for a group that hates government intrusion as much as /. I'm suprised that this is the first post that really suggests that the students stand up for themselves without whining to the courts.
We are all just people.
School Power Over Student Web Speech?
(In my best Montgomery Burns voice) "Yes, well, that's almost a sentence."
Of all the recent headlines, that was the hardest to parse; most headlines are statements. This one is just a noun "school power", I guess. My head hurts.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Personally I like the theory of intelligent design.
The whole concept offers more value in more areas than evolution.
I also believe that people who think that intelligent design cannot exist without religion are both nearsighted and close minded.
Whatever the case may be, design or evolution, the tangibility of our immediate surroundings would not affected either way. Perhaps its our own limited ability to reason out of the box which instinctively leads us to deny or avoid explanations we cannot see or touch. But in any case... It is possible to adopt the theory of intelligent design and actively study, publish and discover the many wonderful things that surround us. The only difference would be the ability to direct credit to the maker as opposed to feeling our existence is by chance.
It is also possible that the concept or mechanisms of evolution can in fact exist as part of intelligent design, another controversial concept I have encountered over the years in various scientific publications. The all or none concept of our existence may very well create more limitations to our abilities to analyze and contemplate the origin possibilities of our universe.
Whatever the case may be, under the current circumstances neither or can be proven. Under this, it would be inappropriate and biased to adopt and introduce one teaching method to schools without the other. People need choices. Teaching one theory in schools and leaving the others to to parents at home is not a choice, that would be a biased system.
The only way to fairly deal with the situation would be to introduce scientific teachings after the starting point thus avoiding handling the origin details all together. Otherwise... fair play is called on and all theories would have to be covered.
This would be of course in a society where human rights and freedoms are upheld.
It's hard to convert the heathens when you won't talk to them.
Why do all these posts that say schools can restrict your rights get insightful ratings? This is simply not true! Yes private institutions can restrict certain rights at their location, or in reference to their property.
This does not, however, give them rights to restrict your rights on your own time and with your own property.
However, these private institutions can retaliate against you for your actions which may *harm* the private institution. Hence, bloggers can be fired for their online comments and students can be expelled for they're online comments.
However, I don't know how identifiable the college sophomore's posts were, and whether or not they were anonymous, and if the college pried that information from someone. If so, they may have violated his rights in doing so. Also, recently there was a court ruling that yes you can post you own rants on the internet and not be liable because you are entitled to your opinion and free speech rights guarantee you the right to do that.
Yet, this college student's comments were more than mere opinion. I'd say this student probably can't win this battle. It would be a poor candidate to test with the SC. Hence I expect the ACLU and other related organizations to not touch this one.
Remember, freedoms are a two way street. While any private entity is perfectly free to associate with any person they want, so are you. The entity doesn't *have* let you on their property or affiliate with them, unless of course it violates certain civil rights - which aren't constitutionally based, these are laws made by presidential decree and hence supplement the federal law and are applicable to *all citizens* [including private institutions]. The same goes for you, you do not have to allow them on your property or affiliate with them. You also have the right to restrict their access to your rights. You can also waive your rights to them. Hence it is possible to allow a psychiatric hospital to admit you, but then once you are admitted may not necessarily be able to leave. This is because you have given them certain rights over your welfare and decision process. This is not under the purview of constitutional law.
Let's not confuse the two, and not grant *insightful* to those trolls that attempt to confuse the two.
> Similarly, it is against the law to deny somebody of their right to free speech, and therefore, they cannot make you abide by the terms of a contract that removes those rights.
The problem is that this sentence is not correct, so it doesn't follow from the last sentence. It is indeed legal to sign away your right to free speech, as regards certain subjects. NDAs and other contracts cover this, and there's lots of legal precedent that you can give up this right contractually as long as it's not deemed coercive, and the contract of attendance at a private university would certainly not qualify as coercive.
Take note that this sort of thing applies only to private entities, so if you attend a public university this would be entirely different, but as regards the institutions discussed above, it's not illegal.
Virg
I've got a fully stocked bar in my room, bar mats, shelf liners, full compliment of glassware and an underlit shelf for the bottles. This is part of the collage thats my photo on facebook. Several of my RAs are my facebook buddies. :) Linky to my bar.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
And this is why removing laser printer secret codes, and having anonymous internet access is important.
This is all so overblown. When I went to UVA's architecture school every other week the faculty and students had a keg out on the patio and chatted about classes, architecture, whatever, provided by the school. I don't know why anyone would go to a college that still tries to treat you like a child.
Society is fundamentally unprepared for the powerless to have a bully pulpit. In times past, the only people who could get themselves heard by a large audience were those who had a base of supporters. Pulpits were scarce and competition for them was fierce. Only the leaders of groups, the wealthy, and those who had a message people wanted to hear could get published or broadcast. The young, among many other classes, could not get heard.
Society has relied on this scarcity to suppress viewpoints that the majority disagreed with. The scarcity created a barrier to entry blocking access to the marketplace of ideas. While far from impenetrable, it was a particularly fine barrier because it was passive -- it achieved a moderate level of suppression without overt acts of censorship. That barrier is falling.
Today, most people have the means to publish (i.e., a computer) in their homes. In a decade or two, everyone will the means to publish in their pocket. To get a message heard today, it does not need to be popular with a large group; it does not need to be popular with a small group; it can be broadcast by as few as one person. A message can now get heard first and then gather support.
Society will have to adapt to a world where the powerless are heard. This business of suppressing student opinion is one part of that. School officials used to be able to force a dissenting student to stop speaking. If nothing else, they could stop him from communicating by barring him from the school property. No longer. You can't stop the signal.
Today, students can easily congregate and speak to each other in fora (online) that are not under school control. School officials are going to have to learn to win arguments on their merits rather than by making dissenters "shut up". And, what we see in student speech is being repeated by all kinds of other formerly voiceless groups. It's a brave new world.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
1. Will people please stop writing about the illegal stuff they've done?
2. First, grasshopper, you must master "1". Until then, there is no "2".
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
If you dont like your school''s policies re student privacy and how willing administration is to dictate what you can do on your own time, then don't go there. Money talks, kids.
In this case, the fact that it was a religious school was almost irrelevant.
Although they won't admit it-- even to themselves-- the reasons why many "adults" like to make rules draconically and unnecessarily restricting "minors" are very ugly. First, there's simple spite-- "Well, we couldn't [do X, Y, or Z] as kids, so why should our kids be able to?" Second, there's the effect of making one feel "better", "higher" or more "special" by hurting others.
In the case of the latter, it's the same logic that causes people to bully others. If you call a scrawny nerdy kid horrible things, it will make you feel better, since you're [presumably] not those horrible things. And if you ban kids from blogging, it will make you feel better, since you-- the "adult"-- are allowed to blog. You're "higher" than the kid, "better" than the kid, more "special" than the kid.
It's the same old tired refrain. People take rights away from kids, then claim that it's for their own good. Kids can't work, even if they want to... "to prevent them from being exploited." (Never mind the kid who wants a part-time job because their parents won't buy them some trivial thing they want to buy, such as computer parts). Kids can't blog, "to protect them from online predators" (bullshit!). Kids can't drive, even if they're Mario Andretti's son and can drive better at 10 than most people at 40, because... well, because EVERYONE KNOWS KIDS CAN'T DO THAT. There are exceptions to every rule, but the sorts of assholes who set rules like this blogging ban either don't know or (more likely) simply don't give a shit.
I weep for the geeks of tomorrow.
To any student or anyone under 18 who is reading this: Just because you're a student, or just because you're under 18 and society labels you a "minor" (a hideous word meaning "unimportant"!) doesn't change who you are as a person. It doesn't make you any less smart, any less capable, any less worthy of basic human rights, including (but not limited to) the right of self-determination or the right to free speech.
People who like setting rules like this love saying things about how kids need such horrific rules to "protect" them, since they don't have as much "life experience". Let me tell you this: "Life experience" doesn't mean shit. There are countless millions of drunken, stupid, ignorant, arrogant 40-somethings out there. And there are countless millions of precocious, intelligent, kindly kids and teens-- kids and teens who rightfully deserve the preferential treatment unfairly given to anyone who just so happens to have been breathing for at least the wholly arbitrary count of 6,570 days. I'm 26, and I don't consider myself superior to you. These rules are a load of bullshit, completely unfair and immoral, and it pains me greatly to know that you are being subjected to such shit (as I was).
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
SLIPPERY SLOPE?!?! Since when have high school students *EVER* had free speech or freedom of the press rights? They certainly didn't when I was in high school. And AFAIK, they NEVER HAVE.
The only one who actually seems to think these sorts of stories are important are naive, dumbass kids who are still too young and stupid to realize that all that "freedom of speech," "freedom of press" bunk they feed you in civics class is just a bunch of idealistic bullshit.
You have only as many rights as you can protect. And that usually boils down to how much you piss off the "Powers That Be" vs. how much money or power YOU have to defend yourself against lawsuit, arrest, harassment, etc.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
When I was a kid, I thought Sweden to be a horrid, fascist regime - mostly behind the forced sterilization of women with low IQ scores. Then I started noticing the "dumb Swede" jokes (having an Irish surname I had previously been too occupied with "Pat & Mike" jokes to pay these any mind)... The popularity of these jokes seemed to decline in sync with the timeline of this sterilization. Now, I see stupid people everywhere, to paraphrase. I find myself advocating the sterilization if not euthanization (is that a word) of same as I frequently encounter them when I least expect to.
Over the years my love of country has been diminished by the actions of many of my countrymen. I weathered the McCarthy era with my head held high, knowing that the evil storm would eventually blow itself out... Senator Eugene McCarthy brought me hope again. But in light of more recent events I have come to realize I that was wrong about there being a limit to the evil of the shortsighted. I was probably wrong about the forced sterilization, too. If we had been doing that over here, we probably wouldn't have the Patriot act or the new Kansas monkey trials.
I'm thinking that Sweden might be a pretty good place to live out the remains of my days. How hard is it to obtain a visa and/or where can I find some coyotes with umlauts in their names?
If my university were to try this stuff on me, I'd tell them to give my money back to me and I'll head on over to the vocational school and take an automotive repair class.
His exact words (read the article, read my quote, etc.) were "he needs to be eliminated".
Cheers.
Please help metamoderate.
Free speech is just an illusion. Doubly so on a website.
Sure, no problem.
Sorry about that guy, too. He's kind of a douche.
Thanks. I appreciate that.
None of that is true. I'm a lecturer in a UK university, and frankly, I think the problems with you are all too clear from your inventions and hysterical tone.
1. You have no right to a free lawyer, but that is because you are not being tried for a criminal offence. The NUS can and will provide you with a lawyer if you asked. They are not "unpaid volunteers".
2. Universities cannot prevent freedom of speech, that is just a lie.
3. All universities will send you a copy of their procedures on request.
4. Why should you be rewarded for your abusive behaviour with a time extension for coursework? Grow up, you aren't at primary school anymore.
5. There are no formal qualifications for being a university lecturer. End of. If you wanted to alleged incompetence that is completely different issue.
6. By submitting coursework you do not sign over IP. This is completely and utterly untrue, you are a liar.
BTW the fact that Private Schools righty have the right to choose the own membership condtion is the very same reason That the "School voucher" and other intives the compermises a Public schools ability to proviade edcuation to any student in its distrect is a bad idea.
as a (democratic) Republic, all citizens need a level education that the can make thought out informed choices, to forfill the duties to society, in things like, Elections, Jury Duty etc.
--Rogue, who's existance has yet to be disproved
Maybe student 'web' speech has'nt been too legally plumbed, but student associations with other students have. In the 1800's, students who wanted to join fraternities and sororities and were prevented from doing so therepon took the offending administration and its officials to court and won. In the Supreme Court. The Bill of Rights says we have freedom of speech, and among other things Freedom of Association. The two are equally stressed, so case law from one should have some guidance for the other.