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Dental School Blogger Punishment Reduced
John McAdams writes "When a Marquette University Dental School student blogger made some nasty comments about an (unnamed) professor and (unnamed) classmates on his personal blog, the Dental School administration imposed a draconian punishment on him. He was to be suspended from school for a year, lose a prestigious scholarship, and seek counseling for supposed "behavioral problems."
The case received wide attention, starting with local talk radio, the local daily paper and reverberated through the blogsphere.
Dental School Dean William Lobb, considering the case on appeal, has now reduced the student's punishment. The student now faces probation rather than suspension, will be allowed to keep his scholarship, and will not have to seek counseling. He will have to do 100 hours of community service, and apologize for the blog posts.
While this is certainly good news for the student, it leaves open the question of how much freedom Marquette Dental School students have in posting on their personal, non-university connected blogs."
If you consider the punishment to be a censure rather than some sort of childish spanking, then it makes sense, in that context. In any line of work you are subject to rules and regulations and one of those is that you are not to belittle another member of the profession in public (more or less, I suppose).
He's getting censured for doing something that ought to be out of character of a student in a professional studies course. That's not uncommon. In fact, it's the same as would happen out in the job Marquette.
are being tossed right out the window. We're being conditioned to be silent sheep, fat for the slaughter on too much food and television.
Kinda cool, the power you can weild as a University administrator, silence your critics by taking away everything good they've worked their ass off for.
1. pick one of the guys who gives you shit at school.
2. Start up a blog in his name.
3. Write unflattering commentary about the school.
4. Kick back and watch as the school jumps to conclusions, bans the guy, and takes six months bureaucratic time looking at the situation before realising maybe it isn't really his blog.
You don't have to worry about little things like investigations in #4 happening BEFORE the guy is suspended because hey, this is the private arena, and there's no such thing as due process.
There are a million blogs out of each school. What is the chance that this one gets picked out, read and taken seriously.
ACTUALLY, I've got a funny story.
Back when BestBuy was doing their major GeekSquad rollout; like when they were putting it into almost every store. It used to be in just a few larger stores.
I was working there at the time as a pc tech, and we had a guy come in to apply for one of the new GeekSquad positions (everyone was being converted, but our store had put out advertisements for "now hiring Geek Squad agents" and crap like that). I helped do his interview. We had gotten his email address and everything.
He came back in for a few more interviews with other managers and senior employees; and me and one other guy did a little researching, because something just wasnt quite right. It turns out, the guy had an online blog; our search yielded us a xanga account with the same name as his email; it was quite unique, and the guy had pics of himself on there.
In his blog, he states several times; about how he owns another company that did the same thing GeekSquad was supposed to do (house to house repairs, etc). And that he was going to get hired at Bestbuy for Geeksquad, and how he would be "competing against himself" and taking over GeekSquad. We had a GOOD laugh for about 30 minutes; then printed that particular blog entry; and gave it to the GM. Needless to say, he didnt get hired LOL. The guy was like 19 and seemed bent on world domination via Bestbuy (definitely not the place to start lol) and needed a backslap to the face (or a kick in the nuts, whatever you want to say).
At my school several students were punnished because their blogs contained insulting comments about teachers and other students. Many on the bloggers were suspended, and one of them (who was to become the student council president) lost his role in student council!
I agree. Although I would say that if you DO name the professor, then back the claim the fuck up , or expect to cop some razzing for it.
I really think this kid needs to say "NO! Fuck it, Im not accepting probation and Im not accepting community service", and just take it to a judge.
As far as Im concerned, the kid is the victim here, and that dental school owes him an apology.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
To establish libel or slander, first you have to establish that the piece of communication has meaning. In this case, there simply is no meaning to what he says. Furthermore the targeted professor was unnamed; in this situation an individual who claims libel has already validated the truth of the hurtful claim.
The blogger could have been (much) more tasteful, but the bottom line is the same. Marquette administration has put their foot down because if the public will be reading lies about their instituion, the lies better be administrative lies. It's a power play, and ironically the only man being emotionally/socially degraded is the student.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Marquette, as an institution of higher education, almost certainly receives federal funds. Those funds come with strings, I'm not sure if the 1st ammendment is one of those strings but it would be nice if it were.
What does this mean for sites like CourseReviews, where students post in-depth reviews of their professors and courses? Could this lead to students being punished for writing negative reviews? Are students going to be afraid to write negative reviews?
Disclaimer: I run CourseReviews, previously known as TeacherReviews, which is why I am asking.
"You are an asshole." -- that is not libel.
"My professor is a cockmaster." -- that is not libel.
"George Bush is a fucking idiot." -- that is not libel.
"Colin Powell is a nigger." -- not libel.
"Professor X is a pedophile." -- that could be libel.
"My bio professor sleeps with his students." -- that could be libel.
"My professor is an idiot. His lectures are always full of egregious errors." -- that could be libel.
See a pattern? A statement can only be libelous if it's proven to be untrue, thus misrepresentative of the subject. You can't prove statements of pure opinion to be untrue, therefore the first four, although defamatory, does not misrepresent anyone, and so are not libelous.
The civil liberties issue might be a bit different. A lot of people have argued that if you are a student, the school has the right to react to your public remarks about it. This must be true, an employer will have the same right. You cannot expect to remain a member in good standing of a church, company, school or club if you make public speeches bringing it into disrepute. So people are right to argue that this is not a free speech issue.
But surely there is something very odd indeed about the proposed 'punishment' or elements of it. The demand that the guy get counselling. What exactly is the legal status of counselling? When is it required, and who has the right to require that one get it? The idea that a school can require one to get counselled is strange. Even stranger is 'Community Service'. This is used as a punishment by the courts, and the idea that a school can impose it is bizarre.
Surely the civil liberties issue is something like this: what sort of demands may a school make, and what evidence do they have to have before making them? There must be some limits, and it seems to me that in requiring counselling and community service, the school has overstepped them.
Bring it closer to home. My company has a standard of x bugs in y lines of code. One month I am having some problems and go over. Do they have a right to demand that I do 100 hours of community service as penance? Or stand outside at 8.00 with a sign around my neck saying that I sinned? Or wear scarlet overalls for a week? Or not use the cafeteria?
It would be fine to require him to maybe do some remedial tutoring work in the school, or something similar, school related. But the community service and counselling stuff remind you uncomfortably of the Cultural Revolution...
Hmm, isn't free speech a human right? How can anyone legally violate such a thing? I'm pretty sure there can't exist any private agreement that somehow overrides a state law; eg. no institution can make you sight a paper whereby they reserve the right to execute you on the spot for violating some internal code, can't they (ok, I'm going severely overboard but you got the gist)
In this incident free speech was restricted in the sense that the man got retribution for having exercised this right. On the other hand, had he identified the offending professor, he could be sued for libel/slander by the object of his statements; in this case, given the vagueness of them, there's no case unless the administration, feeling the institution's reputation was damaged, procede against the man in a state court.
It's a gray area, private educational institutions (I'm thinking of confessional schools) in a sense act as if they ARE the supreme authority and as such impose an arbitrary code, based on some internal moral and ethic. People often accept this as fact and imply that by entering such system you accept having your rights restricted. No, the ultimate authority is the State and compliance to its rules is required, always (what if the school discriminated on gender, exercised corporal punishment, etc...) So even if someone violated an internal code that doesn't constitute something the State defines as a "violation" there's nothing that can be done.
The guy could sue them into the ground if he wanted and I wouldn't object a single bit about it
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
And you'd lose your lawsuit, as others have repeatedly demonstrated.
It always amazes me that so many people like you want to sue when you have no legal basis to do so.
right, but what laws would they have been breaking (assuming they weren't violating any private contract with the student)? Freedom of speech, association, etc., only applies to government influence. Private entities cannot be sued (well, anyone can sue anyone else for anything, but validity is another manner) for violating freedom of speech. So, what's the legal claim in the lawsuit?