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?"

Comments

Facebook

[NitsujTPU]

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.

Freedom of speech usually wins

[velocityboy123]

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

Re:the kid suggested executing a police officer

[Fulcrum of Evil]

The kid suggested "eliminating"(executing) a campus police officer AND solicited others to attempt what can only be termed entrapment.

Or getting him fired. I read some of the passages, and the methods seemed to be a petition, digging up dirt, or entrapment. That isn't murder.

Re:The end result: loss of freedom

[dvdeug]

All institutions must act in accord with government regulation. Period. It has long been held that private sector entities do not have an arbitrary right to bar you; Souter, in the majority decision for the Supreme Court on "Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Group of Boston":

The Massachusetts public accommodations law under which respondents brought suit has a venerable history. At common law, innkeepers, smiths, and others who "made profession of a public employment," were prohibited from refusing, without good reason, to serve a customer. Lane v. Cotton, 12 Mod. 472, 484-485, 88 Eng. Rep. 1458, 1464-1465 (K.B. 1701) (Holt, C. J.); see Bell v. Maryland, 378 U.S. 226, 298, n. 17 (1964) (Goldberg, J., concurring); Lombard v. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 267, 277 (1963) (Douglas, J., concurring). As one of the 19th century English judges put it, the rule was that "[t]he innkeeper is not to select his guests[;] [h]e has no right to say to one, you shall come into my inn, and to another you shall not, as every one coming and conducting himself in a proper manner has a right to be received; and for this purpose innkeepers are a sort of public servants." Rex v. Ivens, 7 Car. & P. 213, 219, 173 Eng. Rep. 94, 96 (N.P. 1835); M. Konvitz & T. Leskes, A Century of Civil Rights 160 (1961).

The ERA is not a constitutional amendment; it was a proposed constitutional amendment. The civil rights legistlations are based on the principle that the private sector is a large part of American life, and that we don't want to let people of a certain race, religion, or gender be arbitrarily excluded from a large part of American life.

Here the ideal to be upheld is that an American is permitted to express his or her opinion and to talk freely; if the associations the schools had with their students were voluntary, like those a college has with its students, it would be different. The value of private schooling should not be that it produces a student terrified of exercising his or her rights, or worse, unfamiliar with them.