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?"
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.
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
But as ReformedExCon noted, this is not an issue of free speech--or rather, just an issue of free speech.
If a college has a defined code of conduct--or, in my school's case, an honor code--and there is photo evidence of the infraction online, than why can't that evidence be admissable? I mean, if you were a school admin and someone showed you a picture they snapped themselves of someone shooting up, you'd consider that to be good evidence, right? Why should that change just because it was posted on Facebook?
Certainly, some of the issue pertain to speech--but what if a student does something against the honor code, and defames the image of the school? Are the school's hands tied?
Unfortunately, it's not so simple as just free speech.
--Petey
As long as they don't take money from the federal government, then "yes", "yes", and "yes".
The only reason some of them don't is that they don't want to get caught doing it and then suffer the consequences.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
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
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.
I see your point, but I disagree.
I'm not so sure that the "right of free speech" should be something that non-government agencies should be able to ignore. Our lives are dominated by interaction with "private" agencies- be it a private school you attend, or the company you work for, a store you shop at, or a website you post to. If free speech isn't protected at any of these places, then where IS it protected? Is the middle-lane of the state-owned freeway the only place I can express my opinion without fear of consequences?
Private agencies shouldn't be allowed to punish an individual for LEGAL acts that they simply don't like.
Of course, no one wants the government telling them what they have to put up with. And I agree with that completely, but maybe there's some room for compromise. Maybe.
State institutions (at any level) are not required to allow free speech. This seems contradictory when you consider the First Amendment, and IMHO it is, but students still get punished for speaking their minds.
The most widespread example is student-run newspapers in high schools and colleges. Students are punished for taking positions in their writing that are critical of the institution, especially at the high school level. Students (and I know this from observing the situation myself at my high school) have been suspended for attempting to run editorials or stories that don't toe the party line. You could argue that they're using school funds, so why should the school print something critical of itself? Because being a state institution, the faculty (in theory) should be required to allow any speech, no matter how damaging or critical.
In practice, not so much. Courts have routinely decided in the schools' favor when these cases have gone to trial. The message this sends to the students is very disturbing (to me at least): Your rights end when you walk through the door. The (required by law) act of attending a public school (barring the home-schooled and those who attend charter schools) requires that the students surrender what IMHO is the most important civil right that American citizens enjoy.
Is it any wonder that these students have no respect for authority? Everyone acts so shocked when the students have total contempt for the school and everything it represents; they don't stop to think that they're teaching them one thing (Americans have lots of rights) but practicing another (You have no rights, shut up or you're getting suspended.)
Here's a free clue folks: Treat people with respect, and you'll get respect back. Don't treat them like second-class citizens and then wonder why nobody shows up for the pep rally.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
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.
No, she should fight this in court on the grounds that the school has no right to limit what she does off-campus, in her own free time, even if it's illegal (since it's the police's job to do that, not the school's). Moreover, she should fight it on the grounds that the school can't do that even if the student signed a contract saying that it can, because the right to do whatever you want in your free time can't be signed away in a contract.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
This is like my company firing me for being in a pub brawl.
No, it is not. Being an employee vs being a student are very different situations.
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
Your company can fire you for doing drugs outside of work hours, can't they? Don't some companies in the US drug test?
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl
That's not true. You cannot give away your constitutional rights, no matter what you sign.
Yeah, as a student YOU PAY THEM to go to school there. If I were her I'd rather be in a school that wasn't interested in dictating my life to me after handing them a bunch of money for a diploma.
No sig for you!!
No, she should fight this in court on the grounds that the school has no right to limit what she does off-campus, in her own free time, even if it's illegal
That's absolutely true. It's equally true that she has no right to force a private institution to allow her to attend./p
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.
Personally, I don't think it's any of the university's business what crimes you commit off campus, but that's the way things are.
If you are commiting crimes on campus that is a good reason for their being concerned you might commit crimes on campus.
I couldn't agree more; the US is going down the drain. However, the European Union is going the exact same way. And much of the world is already down there. Welcome to your Orwellian future.
;)
The EUCD, the software patent legislation (which might just be happening anyway), the joint effort of ministers Bodstrom of Sweden and Clarke of the UK when it comes destroying civil liberties in Europe, the less-than-perfect freedom of press in Sweden (not to mention the debate about journalists blogging on their own time) - it's a road paved with mostly good intentions to guess where.
While I'm all for critizing the US for the DMCA and the USA PATRIOT Act, let's not pretend we (swedes/europeans) live in a perfect society.
In fact, I'd like to argue that it would be easier to turn this development around in the US than in Europe. Due to differing civic cultures, and a much more clear tradition of focusing politics on civil rights and liberties in the US compared to Europe in general, and the social democratic countries in particular.
(Even though you didn't really claim that Sweden was 'better' in your post, I felt obligated to point out that it isn't.
L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers.
Couldn't possibly agree more.
I am brazilian, and in my childhood times I thought that America (the country) was the most freaking cool place in the planet.
I may self-justify by saying that I was manipulated by the media, and that the brazilian government is under strict alignment with the american government, but the thing is not really like that.
I studied English for 14 (yes, fourteen) years, always got the higher grades and lots of internships and summer jobs in America and Europe for the sake of the dream of someday moving to America definitely and even naturalizing myself american.
Well.. things didn't go that beautiful.
I had to go to Sao Paulo and wait 2 days in a line to get a visa to do another summer job in america.
Getting there, they made a record of me still in the airport.
And now, DMCA, RIAA, IP laws, and so on...
Why do you think America is losing its way ahead in science?
I don't see any americans allowed to create anymore!
I don't even see any americans allowed to think properly.
If you think, lawsuit.
I've read the american history extensevely, and I think that the building brick of America is freedom.
And all your politicians are taking that brick away, along with educators, teachers, parents and lawyers.
Maybe it is the Bush administration. Maybe not.
The war on terrorism is forced to get your freedoms away?
I think you all have seen the strange facts about September 11th. Where is the plane on the pentagon and so on.
My wish here is, please stand up!
Don't let anybody destroy your country.
It is the greatest, but we don't know for how long...