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IL School District to Monitor Student Blogs
tinkertim writes "According to a Yahoo article, a school district in Libertyville, IL will be holding students accountable for illegal actions discussed in their MySpace blogs even if such actions in no way involved the school or another student. A spokesperson for the school district was quoted as saying: 'The concept that searching a blog site is an invasion of privacy is almost an oxymoron,' he said. 'It is called the World Wide Web.' Supposedly, no direct monitoring or snooping will be done unless the school receives a report from a concerned parent, community member or other student."
The ambiguity of the criteria doesn't help either: 'Illegal' is one thing, but 'inappropriate' is another one they use (though not mentioned in the summary) and more or less gives them a license to discipline (oh, but only after some undisclosable anonymous source expresses 'concern', of course). I'm willing to bet that illegal means mostly slander against school employees, and inappropriate is 'anything else we don't like and can use as dirt against a kid we want to get rid of'.
Given that most of the time, it's parental apathy being compensated for by the authorities, it's very telling that in this case parents are demanding to be given back their control.Libertyville? Yeah- right.
If we're going to become a 1984 style police state it makes sence to start with the young people.
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
...of law enforcement. Shall we have our police officers teaching and managing our schools now? I can't even fathom why a school would want to take on this responsibility. I bet that if this keeps up, a few years down the road parents are going to be yelling at the schools for not catching Jonny's 'illegal' blog. What a mess. Now only if the parents would make the same committment!
You go to school, you know people.
If you reference those people in your blog, we can find you
You go to school, you do extra-curricular activities
If you reference those activities in your blog, we can find you
You go to school, you have classes
If you mention those classes, we can find you
You go to school, you dislike a teacher
If you mention that teacher, we can find you
Basically, We can find you.
Can't we all just get along
People shouldn't have to conceal their personal information online when the searcher has no right to use it . It'd be bad enough if a school punished students for ranting about school online, but the fact that they are punishing students for anything non-school related is downright draconian and offensive. They have no right to do that.
This is yet another step towards government-as-parent. Since when is it the school's job (as a government funded organization) to police students' activities when they are not on school property, and are not engaged in activities related to the school? Further, just because someone writes something in a blog does not mean it is true. Keywords: "Waste of resources".
This is a perversion of what schools should actually be focusing on. Why not focus on teaching students how to perform basic life skills, like manage credit, get a bank account, balance a checkbook, and spot shady deals when trying to buy a car? At least that would fall under "education", not "parenting" (although parents should be teaching their children all that as well).
Let the public schools do what they please. If they do it well, they'll thrive. If they do it poorly, charter schools will eat them alive. Meanwhile, whatever happened to free speech, at ay cost?
"The board of Community High School District 128 voted unanimously on Monday to require that all students participating in extracurricular activities sign a pledge agreeing that evidence of "illegal or inappropriate" behavior posted on the Internet could be grounds for disciplinary action."
Clearly this school is just preparing its students for the America of tomorrow.
Last time I checked, we have agencies for handling illegal activities. I believe they are called "police".....
Since when does a school have the time or resources to monitor this type of thing? Sure, sure, if they get notified and see it on the web page, report it to be the police. But last time I checked every person in this country is allowed "Due Process" before being sentenced for any type of crime, and last time I checked it is NOT the schools that are allowed to levy a sentence prior to a court of law.
Overstepping their bounds? WAY overstepping their bounds my friends.
... I smell a lawsuit! ... Yeah, a big one - at least six figures ... ;)
Shh.
Well since I hate my classmates, I think I will scan their yearbook picture, create an account as them, then ramble on about mercy killings etc... ... Wonder what will happen when this occurs.
Infiltrated dot Net
since when is it stalking to read something that a person voluntarily posted publicly?
Here's a wild guess:
Kick you off the teams (and other extra activities that look good on college admission forms). Kick you out of AP classes. Suspend or expell you. Put black marks in your record (and otherwise interfere with earning decent grades) that will blight your carreer and reduce your earning and marriage prospects for the rest of your life.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Now some of you might say it would be absurd to have a trial by jury every time a teen flings gum at the teacher; or that screaming for 40 seconds at the top of your lungs in the middle of your AP gov test should be covered under freedom of speech. I agree with you, and furthermore, I agree with the three facts I stated above.
(Though it REALLY pains me to say this) Students shouldn't be protected by the BoR. If they were, more chaos would ensue than if there were no rules at all. If I was back in school and I could wear a costume of a priest with a 2 foot boner while chasing a picture of a 3 yr old hanging a foot in front of my face (...I actually did...) then why not? If I could say the teacher is a homosexual to their face and have it be protected speech, I WOULD have! Many students would have. And thats kind of the point, the more you let them get away with, the more they will get away with.
Now let's apply what we've learned to the situation at hand. 1. Even though your admitting to an action on myspace isn't even CLOSE to proof (confessions not under oath aren't proof in the real world. Furthermore, someone could take a picture of you and make a myspace account in your name to frame you!) And as we know, schools do not need proof to hold you accountable. 2. These students are minors, like we learned before - fetuses in the third trimester have more rights than a minor!!! 3. While MySpace servers aren't in your school, they can be acccessed from school. Good enough for the deans! 4. Sorry son, you got pwned.
Slash-for-Thought
You used the wrong phrase...
but the fact that they are punishing students for anything illegal or offensive after such actions have been brought to the attention of the school is downright draconian and offensive
Has a different ring, don't you think?
So yes, you video-taping yourself lighting cats on fire and cutting yourself might get you in trouble now with your school. Boo frekin hoo...
Under your logic, the officials at Columbine High School shouldn't have done anything unless the kids were drawing up the plans to stage a full-scale assault while they were in art class.
What a child does outside of class that impacts the campus should rightfully be a concern of the district, even if its not under their direct "authority."
If a kid on myspace -- aka the backwater of the web where HTML from 1995 is still popular -- is talking about plans to take out a group of students, or running drugs onto campus to sell during lunch, then I think the district not only has a duty, but an obligation, to try and make sure neither happens.
If they didn't, and tragedy struck we'd all be in here tsk, tsking about the obvious warning signs that were missed.
No, "someone" doesn't. And generally when "someone" with no claim to a kid decides to start monitoring them, it's called STALKING.
Considering that probaly almost half the thirteen year old Tammies on 13-yo IRC chat channels are really Big-assed-Burt, truck driver from IL, how long before BaB starts making up ficticious blogs that get real Tammies into trouble.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
WHOOSH!!!!
Did you hear that? That was the sound of the point going over your head. It's not a privacy issue. The problem is that the school is punishing kids for things that they say WHEN THEY'RE NOT ON SCHOOL GROUNDS!!! As soon as that kid steps off of their property, it's none of their damned business what the kids say. And I don't give a crap whether it's just talking about extra-curricular activities or not. They are using this to coerce kids into keeping their mouths shut. Kids are learning about blackmail at an early age. What would you think if your work made you sign a pledge stating that they will watch out for anything you post online and if they don't like it, you will lose your bonus and/or raise for the year along with some of your benefits?
And before anyone else starts rambling on about kids who post death threats, etc. I believe those and other truly harmful language are already illegal, requiring no action whatsoever on the part of the school.
If you mod me down, I shall become less powerful than you could possibly imagine.
There's no oxymoron, but it's clear the spokesperson is a moron.
And who gets to decide what's offensive? They do. And if it doesn' tinvolve school, how the hell is it any of their business if a kid says something offensive anyway? You're an absolute fool to think it would only be used against kids who did something illegal.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
Has a different ring, don't you think?
So yes, you video-taping yourself lighting cats on fire and cutting yourself might get you in trouble now with your school.
If it is illegal, then it is a matter for the police. If it is offensive, it's no one's damn business. This isn't a matter for the school, dumbass. But, what do I care? I would say that I hate your freedom, but it doesn't look like you really have much for me to hate anymore.
I feel like death on a soda cracker.
Fav. quote: "It is called the World Wide Web."
... well ... educating. I guess we're just special that way.
I'm not sure what goes on down south of the border, but up here in the great white north, we have police for dealing with criminal activites. We try to keep people working in the educational system busy
German Republic of America. The constitution had a pretty good run at 220 years. Now we value "safety" more than liberty like all good collectivist societies do. You'll enjoy your iris scans, national ids, constant monitoring of every financial transaction you undertake, after all if you aren't doing anything wrong what do you have to fear? It's for the children and against the terrorists and the MSM supports it, what more do need? Only anti-social subversive dissidents "think for themselves" that's sooooo 20th century and definitely a sign of mental illness.
Who won the cold war again? I keep forgetting... We've always been at war with East Asia, right?
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
What a child does outside of class that impacts the campus should rightfully be a concern of the district, even if its not under their direct "authority."
Your post impacts me and is rightfully my concern, even if you're not under my direct "authority." Expect me to appear at your door, Mr. Chris Lykins, and give you a good dopeslap.
Feel that twang of anger and annoyance? That's a sign that your "impacts" test is overly broad. A high school student's drunken weekend might impact the school, especially if it's a party with their peers (other students), but it is a problem for the police and the patents, not the school. The school's ability to discipline my child begins at the school door and ends at the end of an extracirricular activity. Anything else had better be directly related to the school and its operations. Hint: Reckless driving on the way to and from school is my problem, not the school's.
With the education system as it is now, how did anyone even think of something this inane? We don't have enough teachers to teach, yet alone enough teachers to sift through kids' blogs looking to see if they did something illegal or "inappropriate."
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Correction: kids shouldn't be so stupid as to post something on the PUBLIC internet that they wouldn't want their teachers/parents reading. When a kid gets in trouble for writing that he hates his math teacher and wants to kill him because he got an F on a test, that kid shouldn't bitch about civil liberties when he gets called to the principal's office the next day. Freedom of speech is great and all but talking about doing something illegal on MySpace is starting to become as stupid as saying "bomb" in an airport (I realize that's a bit of an exaggeration, before you flame me for it).
Dealing with issues that don't concern the school are shady, I definitely agree there. However I can't imagine there's anything stopping the school official from notifiying the police if he/she sees something of real concern.
What it boils down to is that you should know the risks associated when you post information in a public forum. If you wouldn't yell it in the streets, don't blog it.
They have no right to do that.
Of course not. But what is important is that the students think they have the right to do it.
The concepts of "justice" and "rights" are alien to secondary schools, paticularly when it comes to older students. The school requires absolute obiedience to dogmatic, rigid, and frequently bizzare and esoteric rules. The code of conduct requirements in most secondary schools go way beyond anything deemed appropriate in almost every other place of work or learning, including universities and primary schools. Quite frankly, what a lot of older teenagers have to put up with is simply outrageous.
The reason of this essentially goes back to the primary problem with "high schools". You cannot reasonably expect to treat teenagers on the cusp of adulthood like infants, order them about like conscripts, or generally demean them without expecting some kind of backlash. In response to blacklashes, in the form of rebellion against order, schools inevitably further increase the draconianism, compounding the problem. Eventually the draconianism becomes so ludacrious that it even extends outside school hours. This decision is mearly the inevitable destination of a paranoid institution subject to little oversight.
My opinion is that the rot set in with the seemingly innocent inclusion of "homework". I believe it is in fact illegal to require anyone to work outside of company hours in the working world. Yet schools routinely require students to perform work outside of school hours, despite those hours being outside the schools remit. During examination years, it is common for large homework loads to vaporise social time. Some parents will lose relationships with children because of homework.
If any employer demanded this they would be sued, or any reasonable employee would leave. Yet the state requires, by law, that your child must follow schools' demands to perform work in what is by rights, your child's free time. From here, it's a small logical step to further demand obidience to school dogma outside of the grounds.
I often question the wisdom of secondary schooling for older teenagers. Put simply, they are expected to stomach what would precipitate mass protest in the general population. And this while they are nearing the age of majority. In some cases, when they are in fact full citizens of the state. It's anti-democratic.
The difference between "high school" and third level education is startling. In one, you must ask permission to urinate. Three months later in another, you are not even mandated to be present in lectures. Schools know this. That is why they go to such ridiculous extremes as holding students accountable for their private publishings. They must. The logic of their position demands it.
May the Maths Be with you!
What is this educational fixation with getting students to sign shit? "Hey Timmy, we are going to extort a signature out of you. Sign here on this document you've had no input to. No? Well then can you explain to the class why you object? Speak up Timmy, nice clear voice. Well, I expect you didn't really want to play on the football team anyway." Isn't the point that the student should voluntarily buy in to the idea? Teachers, being the little Hitler's that they are, don't seem to notice the absurdity: there is a rule requiring voluntary agreement. If you don't sign, no extracurricular activities.
If a kid on myspace -- aka the backwater of the web where HTML from 1995 is still popular -- is talking about plans to take out a group of students, or running drugs onto campus to sell during lunch, then I think the district not only has a duty, but an obligation, to try and make sure neither happens.
The district has an obligation to inform the police. Anything less than this is complicity, and anything more is taking the law into their own hands.
May the Maths Be with you!
I went to this very high school and in my senior year they instituted a policy whereby any athlete involved in any way with the police(even actions that involved free speech) could be removed from their team and banned from all sports activities. This is just a logical progression for such a school and the fact the information isn't confirmed or reliable won't stop them from acting on it.
I'm glad I'm out of that community and it reinforces my weariness of any suburb, anywhere. I feel sorry for the students that have to live in that environment because I'm sure it justs gets worse with each passing year.
The critical issue here is that a private school is not a government agency and as such on on one hand has the right of association and on the other doesn't have the restraints placed on the government by the constitution.
If the student posts that he intends to kill his (teacher|principal|schoolmate), whether on the Net or anywhere else, he has made a death threat. Not only may he be discipined by the school, but he is also subject to arrest and prosecution.
On the other hand, what if he posts a profanity-laden rant about how unfair the grading system is? Not polite, perhaps, but certainly not illegal-and if done off of school hours, EVEN if he posts it on a public website (or shouts it in a public square), he should not be subject to school discipline. Yet, the school could easily state that what he said was "inappropriate", even though it was perfectly legal.
On the school district's part, it is breathtakingly arrogant-especially for a superintendent to claim that she is not violating the students' rights by "searching" their blogs. Of course she's not, it's up there for anyone in the world to read. However, the students' rights ARE being violated if she is suppressing otherwise legal speech in those blogs. Hell of a way to duck the issue.
I fully agree that should you be stupid enough to post information about doing something -illegal- in a public place, you deserve what you get. The big concern here is the ever-slippery "inappropriate". Teenagers naturally experiment and push the boundaries. This is a natural and healthy part of adolescence, and so long as the kid is not -crossing- those boundaries (i.e. breaking the law), it is not the school's place to intervene after the kid goes home.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
And who gets to decide what's offensive?
Society does. That's how the world works. The school only gets involved if there is a complaint (and I would imagine a number of complaints or a significant complaint). Hence, *society* external to the school decides on what is offensive. The school mediates. Again, I'm assuming there are rational people in charge at the school and care not about "Jimmy said the F-word on myspace!", but more serious issues like physical threats or mental abuse.
What is really happening is the school is turning into a "social services" type agency here. Like it or not, these kids are minors, and will be treated like minors. They should be following a path better than just what is legal. Many need direction and guidance. Who is to say that the school has this right? Well, society, again. Just like society dictates the laws (let's not get too picky there) and came up with the social services body.
Remember that inaction can be worse than action.
Indeed... If I was in the school district, I would start a blog, just so I could tell the story of how I used my army of robots to nuke New Tokyo, or something. Then, I would post that I shot Kennedy using my time machine. Then, I would post that I had a glass of wine. I'd love to see them try to engage in any serious disciplinary action based on a single unverified piece of heresay without any corroborating evidence. Certainly, the student has no expectation of privacy. The school has the authority to read any blog they want. But, if they want to actually do anything as a result, they deserve to have their asses handed to them.
Here's a news flash:
They've been doing this at my old school district for well over a year now. (South-central PA)
My sister has had friends busted for having Xanga's, Myspace's, etc which detailed either insults directed at teachers, various parties involving drinking, or direct threats to other students (the excuse they use for this in the first place). Some have even had explusion hearings based upon what was stated on their Xanga's (although in one case... it was just the straw that broke the camel's back).
While there are ways to protect your privacy in these communities, many people don't do it for the simple fact that they INTEDED to be found by their friends. The flaw in the social system is that nobody assumes that their parents would ever check these systems.
The long and short of it is: If you'd get in trouble (either parentally, scholastically, or legally) for saying it to someone's face, either use a proper layer of privacy, or DON'T FREAKING WRITE IT!
Nice. You're already an AC dick. What a cock knocker.
True, but physical planting of evidence is something that most people actually understand, and it entails a certain amount of risk on the part of the planter (plus, you actually have to have said drugs/guns/bombs/etc. to plant).
By making something that's written on the internet a violation, it means that someone can sit at home with nothing but a computer, and possibly a camera to take photos with, and produce that "evidence."
It lowers the barrier to entry on producing incriminating evidence to a very low level, which is very different (in degree, if not in kind) from what's required to frame someone in a more traditional setting.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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But if he is writing fiction, or writing about legal but objectionable activities he partakes in on his own time, that is his, and his parents business, keep the schools out of it.
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I agree with you, minus one detail. Most parents aren't making their kid's on-line activities their business. Someone who actively fantasizes about doing things of that nature does have some problems, and since in this case (it being a child) someone *should* make it their business.
My point was parental apathy is causing schools to do this.