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."
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.
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.
So basically you're saying that the next President will be better than the one we've got now?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Agreed. But watch out for your computer center's AUP -- some schools (like mine) have been sued and lost for censoring their students, but they still refuse to update their AUP to be more realistic.
So do the American thing. Sue. Since they already lost once, failing to update their policies (after a reasonable time period) shows bad faith, along with clear disregard and contempt for the court's authority. Judges don't like that. In fact, they often bitchslap people/organizations for that.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
So take a picture of yourself drinking a coke, then photoshop it
into a beer. If someone is stupid enough to come after you, show
them the origional picture (preferrably later rather than earlier
in the process) and call them an idiot. It will make them think
twice the next time.