Student Suspended Over IM Icon

Chris Reimer writes "C|Net News.com is reporting that a 15-year-old student lost a lawsuit over having an instant messenger icon that represented a death threat against an English teacher on his personal computer that another student reported to school authorities. From the article: 'His parents sued, claiming that the icon was protected by the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech, that the school district failed to train staff in proper threat assessment and that the school board violated state law in not following proper procedures. [The judge] Mordue rejected the free-speech claims.'"

Comments

Re:what did he expect?

[ackthpt]

that's the only part of the decision i disagree with. an IM icon isn't a threat, it's an icon.

This isn't the 1950's and the Cleaver's we're discussing here. There are in the past 20 years several accounts of perfectly normal children appearing at school one day to settle a few scores. Nobody sees these things coming, particularly parents. Parents who don't check up on who their children hang out with, don't engage in conversations to see how their day went, but are always shocked when they get a call from the police.

I worked in San Jose a few years ago and some joker took some pictures of himself with a bunch of guns and ammo and dropped them off at the local drug store for processing. An alert employee thought there was something wrong and reported the photos to the police. The guy had been driving past my office every day for months. Guns, explosives, pipe bombs, etc. Plans to kill people at his community college were found in his home. Free speech? Sometimes people have to take an interest. I'm seriously bugged Aaron's parents are defending this.

Re:what did he expect?

[posterlogo]

did the school over react by suspending him for a semster? probably. but good grief. you don't make icons of blowing a teacher's brains out and think that's totally cool.

Well, it all comes down to the definition of what is or isn't a threat, what is or isn't acceptable. Where to draw the line? I'm willing to be that although laws specifically haven't changed, this sort of icon pre-Columbine probably wouldn't have resulted in suspension. So what has changed? The bar has changed. The problem is that the bar wasn't well defined in law, or even school rules. Is the IM icon OK if he doesn't use it to communicate with any other students or teachers, and doesn't use it at school? Is it OK if he just drew it at home, never brought it to school, never communicated its existence, yet someone found it anyway and reported him? Basically, are the administrators punishing only what they can see, what they know about? And what constitutes a threat? If I'm a pissed off student after getting detention or something and I'm grumbling to myself and mumbling under my breath that I wish the teacher would just be taken out back and shot, and someone heard me? How about if I mumbled that I wish the teacher would just jump off a cliff? How about if I mumbled I wish the teached would just get abducted by aliens and blasted to oblivion with a ray gun? Clearly, not a credible threat, merely because we haven't seen it happen yet, really. The problem is that speech is infinitely variable... we do our best and we can only say we're going to protect free speech or we're not. Then we have to clarify that and say free speech is only free as long as it per se does not represent a danger (like yelling fire in a crowded theater), etc. I really don't know where to draw the line, but it certainly seems the pendulum has swung in the direction of treating all students as potential Columbinites.

This is not protected speech

[rbanzai]

If this kid shot his teacher (or fellow students) and after the fact this story came up people wouldn't be talking about free speech. They would be amazed that such a blatant "warning sign" was ignored.

I'm glad it did not develop into actual violence but I wonder what's going on in that kid's head. I disliked teacher's when i was a kid but did not feel strongly enough to express it graphically and so bluntly.

It's not protected speech. It's a stupid, violent statement that would not be laughed off by the /. crowd if they were the target of this kid's anger. It's not funny, it's creepy.

oh come on

[geekoid]

Are you telling me that through out all of high school you never said something like:
"Another pop quiz? I wish the teacher were dead."
or say:
"I want to kill that SOB"!

Re:oh come on

[Haeleth]

However, rephrased as "I'll make sure the teacher were dead" or "I will kill that SOB" the quotes are more threatening, maybe?

Well, yes. However, given that the message that this article is about did not, in fact, contain any statement of intent, I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say.

Re:oh come on

[ShaunC]

Are you telling me that through out all of high school you never said something like:
"Another pop quiz? I wish the teacher were dead."

Sure I did, but I made damned sure that nobody but the friend(s) I was talking to would overhear me, and I sure as hell never wrote it down. I learned very early on - 4th grade, as a matter of fact; I still remember the teacher and the incident - that anything you write down can and will come back to haunt you. It's a lesson I've not forgotten. I'm glad that I actually had the ability, the freedom, and the opportunity to fuck up so young. It's saved my hide in any number of situations that I might have otherwise gotten into since then.

That said, I can understand why this kid didn't know not to "write it down." There's been a huge paradigm shift in society since those days. I was fortunate enough to live my childhood and adolescence in an age where most parents took responsibility for raising their own kids, instead of throwing up their hands in defeat and bitching that the government didn't do it for them. I grew up in a time where I actually knew what "go play outside" meant, and my parents actively encouraged me to do so, with no adult supervision, no less!

It was through those experiences that I learned how to look out for myself. I learned right from wrong. Perhaps more importantly, I learned that sometimes, doing the "right thing" is the wrong decision, and vice versa. There are times when doing something wrong, or even breaking a law, is the prudent thing to do. And there are those times when no matter how right you may feel, no matter how oppressed you might think yourself to be, and no matter how unfair life is, you simply need to shut up and take it, or at the very least, avoid flaunting your opinions until such time as you're confident that you're going to win the battle. If I could sit down with every teenager in the country and give them one piece of advice, that would be it.

Some may say it's a bad thing that I knew how to play politics by the time I was 15, or that I somehow "lost my innocence" at too young an age, but it's served me well enough ever since and I wouldn't have it any other way. I may have had similar fantasies to the kid in this article about some of my high school teachers, but I didn't communicate them to anyone. By the time I hit high school, I already was aware of what the limits were, how far I could push them (for the most part; I'm not saying I never got in trouble at all ;) and when they'd push back.

I have a hard time picking a side in this case. On the one hand, I want to say the kid is an idjit for doing what he did. On the other hand, I can sympathize with why he did it. Flip the coin again and I have a hard time comprehending that someone who's grown up "post-Columbine" wouldn't realize that this sort of thing is going to cause problems. And back to the other side yet again, he's probably just ignorant and clueless, and doesn't know that columbine is the name of a pretty purple flower, much less that of a tragic school shooting. I don't really blame the school system, but I can't blame the kid, either.

Kids these days are so sheltered by their parents that they aren't getting the chance to develop those decision making abilities. As the saying goes, "good experience comes from judgement, judgement comes from bad experience." In other words, if you aren't afforded the opportunity to make the wrong decisions now and then, you're never going to learn how to make the right decisions.

Mom and Dad hear on the news every night that a child molestor lurks on every streetcorner waiting to snap up Junior (or Juniette), and they buy into it, and suddenly "go play outside" is replaced by "go play video games." Social interaction is limited to groups of their peers, and frequently not in-person. Then Mom and Dad see one of - what is it, 8 or 10 now - episodes of Dateline NBC about !!!EVIL SEX PERVERTS ON EVERY WEBSITE ARE RAPING YOUR

"I cant put my bag overhead,my pipe bomb's there!"

[orangesquid]

He should've added a few more frames to the animation that said... "THIS IS A JOKE. (DUMBASS)"
After the whole debauchle with that girl on livejournal talking about the president and getting interrogated by the secret service, I put a disclaimer on my livejournal page saying that nothing I say is actually a threat (if it seems like a threat, it's a joke), and that if anything seems like it's defamatory (libel, slander, what-have-you), then I'm exaggerating or fabricating for literary effect or humor's sake.

Maybe I have a crappy sense of humor. So what? I think I'm entitled to make bad jokes, even if I have to provide a disclaimer. (of course, there WAS that case about the lawyers suing these guys who were making lawyer jokes in front of them... but I think it was on grounds of harassment---still over the top to sue, though, IMHO.)

It's true that you don't always know when someone's joking... and after some of the high school shootings, I guess it's understandable for the school to take it seriously, but, they should have just asked Aaron---"Is this a joke? Do you actually want to harm your teacher? Do you have plans to harm your teacher?" and perhaps requested that he make it obvious that he's joking, or stop using the icon, or something. (Anybody with a copy? Put it on freenet, please?)

Re:what did he expect?

[packeteer]

Your taking the wrong arguement for the right cause. I think in the end you and me both agree but your slippery slope arguement is jsut wrong. I know you really want to draw a parallel between 1984 and this crime but there is not much to work with.

Planning a crime IS a crime. Discussing a crime IS a crime. Thinking about a crime is NOT a crime.

These are some important distinctions. You seem to make the claim that if someone is PLANNING a school shooting but has not done it yet there is nothing wrong. I think most reasonable people including yourself can agree that this is wrong. If someone is only fantasizing about a crime or considering a crime then its wrong but not ILLEGAL and the parents/school are right to step in but not with punishment.

Re:what did he expect?

[loraksus]

If we criminalize planning to commit a crime,

You seem to be unaware of the "conspiracy to commit..." series of crimes, which can actually be quite draconian.

If you and your friend are drinking one night and say something like, "Yo, we need to pop a cap in Mr. X's ass." and one of you goes out and purchases a deer rifle - an overzealous DA can press charges and you'll probably be convicted by the average jury .... even if the conversation wasn't serious and you bought the rifle for a deer hunt.

Re:Ah... good plan

[fishybell]

I agree fully. I don't condone the kid's actions, I definately don't feel a suspension would help the true problem.

A friend of mine in eighth grade sent a threatening letter to president@whitehouse.gov as a joke. The same day a fellow from the FBI (or the secret service, it was a long time ago, I wasn't there at the time, and I really no longer remember) came to the school, asked who was using a certain computer at a certain time, found my friend, and gave him a good stern talking-to about threats, pranks, and such much like you would get if you prank called 911. However, the school in it's infinite wisdom banished him from lunch hour (he had to eat alone in a empty room) and computer class for the rest of the year (again, he spent the hour alone in an empty classroom). So all throughout high school (and still to this day) many people know him only as "that kid who threatened to kill Clinton."

My friend had learned his lesson just fine from the response from the feds, so why did the school have to impart such a grand, and rather debasing, punishment? Mostly for personal pride I feel. That way, if asked, they could say that they were "tough on crime" and "tough on delinquents." Believe me, my friend was no delinquent before that, only after. Coincidence? I . Think . Not.

Re:what did he expect?

[hazem]

Public schools have policies that restrict the constitutional rights of students and they can therefore punish students where an adult citizen might only be investigated.

I believe that concept is called in loco parentis. It means "in place of the parent" - that the school acts in the place of the parent while the child is at school. The problem is, it should only apply when the kids "in loco" the school. The kid at home should be free to say what he wants or put whatever he wants on his IM.

It's still a dumb thing to do.

What's the big deal??!

[necro2607]

Dude, my friends and I drew pictures of people getting killed or the school getting blown up or whatever, all the time.. Before AND after the Columbine "massacre"... it's pretty trivial and also super common for kids who are extremely frustrated with the school system, sick of being bullied or pushed around, and/or have a crappy social life etc.

Frankly, what's the big deal? The teacher is probably annoying as hell. Some teachers are painfully condescending and patronizing. I know I had a really hard time dealing with that crap all throughout high school. It was even worse because I had parents that treated me very well, and treated me like a fellow human being while they raised me, so my first reaction to teachers' condescention was anger, because it felt like a direct insult to me.

Anyway, before you go calling this kid a dumbass or whatever, consider that not everyone handles things the same way you do.

Re:not the funniest joke

[LionKimbro]

I agree. This stuff isn't funny.

But you know, when I was 13, (which was pre-Columbine,) this sort of stuff was funny. Except only for kids.

Or was it?

My mom thought "Death Camp," a series of stories one of my friends wrote, in 7th grade, was pretty damn funny. She read each one, cover-to-cover. They were the story of a team of kids, who were imprisoned daily in a middle school, forced to eat terrible food, with mutant teachers trying to take over the kids minds. The kids amassed a ton of weapons (we were all playing Wasteland at the time, you see,) blew away the teachers, (who were shooting back, and conducting vile experiments on other students,) helped everyone escape, and then... ...took off in an SR-71 that happened to be parked on the 1/4-mile track?

At any rate: We had wonderful times coming up with the stories. We'd joke about them at lunch, and imagine how awesome it would be to finally get free of all that schooling. We'd egg on our star writer (my friend, who I shall not name, since he's actually around, writing on the Internet,) and he'd write out another episode in the story. It was 15 episodes total, I think, each around 4-6 pages long, typewritten out on computer.

We loved the stories. My mom thought they were cute.

And I really think there's something of value to the quest for freedom.

Now, come Junior year, Senior year in high school, we got the idea one lunch: "Oh! Let's re-read those old stories! Death Camp! Yah!" But, our friend told us, "No. I burned them."

"You burned them?!" "Yeah. I burned them." "But why?!"

"Because they were crap!"

And it's true. They were crap. But they were our crap, and we loved them. But, our friend just burned stuff after a year, generally; He was that sort of writer. "It's not good enough." (torch!)

Most of us are now well paid geeks. There's a stellar composer in our bunch. The author, despite graduating Pepperdine, and a number of other honors (including graduating Valadictorian from our high school) isn't doing so well; He's struggling with his English major, trying to figure out what to do with it.

But basically, we're all doing well, and we're all good people, and we're all contributing.

Now. Let me ask you. In the climate we see exhibited here today in this room (Slashdot.) In this room, of all places, ... Now, I ask you to consider where we would have been, if the world had been post-Columbine.

I can tell you where we'd be: Nowhere. It's quite plausible we wouldn't have graduated from High School. We might be busted for conspiracy to commit murder. Perhaps we'd be looked over for GATE. Our healthy anti-authoritarianism would likely become genuine fear, and have become an intense, focused, directed anti-authoritarianism.

Frankly, I don't think I'd be able to type this today.

Now, I'm feeling done, but I realize something's left to be addressed. I wish it were clear and obvious, and didn't need to be said. Unfortunately, apparently, it does: "No." "No, we never intended to actually kill our teachers." It was just a story. It was just fantasy.

It was a fantasy that we needed, in some ways. We knew that there were ideological battles taking place in the school, we knew that teachers were throwing ideas at us. We knew that we were being graded on whether or not we conformed with ideas that were not necessarily true. We knew that things were complicated. We did not have the language to describe the kinds of things we were intuited. But our brains knew that there was a conflict taking place, and so when our brains reified what we were seeing, it did it in the language of violence: A struggle to get out. A struggle to be free.

We could not wax poetic about "cognitive dissonance," we could not talk about "ontologies," or "paradox." But we felt it, we knew it, and so we wrote it.

May God bless today's kids: They're in a far deeper prison than we were.

tag as helphelpimbeingrepressed

[nuzak]

my tag for this article is "helphelpimbeingrepressed". I plan on using it for every one of these lame "fight the power" type of incidents where a student properly gets an administrative action against him for being a complete dickweed. I suspect I'll have plenty of chance to use it again.

Suspending a student for wearing an anti-war t-shirt is censorship, and unacceptable. But sorry kid, this does not rise to that.

Maybe I should shorten it to "dennis", but that's probably a bit obscure.

Re:I have to disagree with this ruling

[SnarfQuest]

"Free speach" doesn't mean that you can get away with saying anything. Look up "libel", "slandor", and "yelling 'fire' in a crowded movie theater." There are many limits to "free speach" already, and a lot more if the Democrats get their way.

If you took a letter to a teacher that said "Give me all your money or I'll kill you", would you consider that be a similiar form of "free speach"? This one just leaves off the "Give me money" part. Would you take such a "give me money" to a bank, and then argue "free speach"?

Since Columbine, and the assorted copy-cat events, schools have to take threats like this seriously. There are only two possible interpretations of his "icon". If he himself wasn't planning on doing the deed, he was at least advertising for it to be done.

Welcome to the 21st century

[Billly Gates]

"I'd even consider remanding the child to protective services as these parents are seriously a threat when they think this is find behaviour worthy of defending in court."

Back when I was in school (I am only 29) I remembered what happened if I screwed up in school and the teacher called my mother.

Boy, was I scared when dad came home and heard about it. I knew what was going to happen.

Today my gf is a school teacher and rarely if ever do the parents ever discipline the kid. Almost always in this day and age the parent will always standup for the kid and attack the teacher for letting it happen. No one believes in responsibility and everything is always someone elses fault. Its like a character flaw if its your own. I wonder if this is why America is so law suit friendly? Its always someone elses fault and its liek this because we raise our kids to think that.

My gf suspended 2 students for threatening her life. One was expelled and a gang leader and came into the school with a knife with the intention of stabbing her as a way to teach her a lesson by suspending her. Meanwhile she complained to her boss who did nothing and then to the principal who got hte kid out. Meanwhile she is now unemployeed for dare defending herself because it made her boss look bad by going around him. Sigh

I do not mean to sound like a dick but teachers get paid too little and put up with too much garbage to deal with trash. She had to get her masters and 2 certifications and $100,000 in debt just to have the priviledge of putting up with gang bangers and death threats for a mere $39,000 a year.

I do find this odd it happened outside of school grounds but still.

Re:Welcome to the 21st century

[Just Some Guy]

Today my gf is a school teacher and rarely if ever do the parents ever discipline the kid. Almost always in this day and age the parent will always standup for the kid and attack the teacher for letting it happen.

In the first month of school last year, my kid was a pain in the teacher's butt. Nothing really bad, mind you - just testing her limits and the teacher's authority. That sort of thing. Well, one day her teacher met me at the fence when I went to pick up my kid up. She hesitantly, nervously told me that she'd had some minor behavior problems and thought I should know about them. I told her that I was very sorry and that it wouldn't happen again, and to please let me know if there's anything else I could ever help with.

Now, this teacher is hardly the beaten down, frazzled type. Nonetheless, she seemed so genuinely relieved and gratified that I was taken aback. To this day, she always smiles and waves whenever we meet, and the other teachers magically seem to have learned my name and greet me pleasantly.

It's kind of sad that something as simple as a parent backing up a teacher's authority is such an unexpected surprise.

Re:what did he expect?

[contrapunctus]

What would have happened if the kid had that picture on a T-shrit and was wearing it in public?
(I'm assuming an IM icon is viewable by the "public")

This is obscene

[Dragon of the Pants]

I read about half of this thread, and I just keep getting more and more pissed off. If you think this kid should be punished, move to China, you communist. I understand the law and believe threatening a person IS a crime. HOWEVER, in NO WAY is an IM icon a threat directed at anybody unless you personally IM THAT PERSON WITH THE ICON! It's idiots like that judge that make America a bad place to live.

Re:what did he expect?

[infaustus]

Burning effigies is a traditional method of political protest. It is essentially the same principle.

stupid amerikan

[obnoxiousbastard]

You thought that you had freedom of expression while the constution circles the drain!?

You sold that freedom for safety from shadowy boogiemen like terrorist and kiddie porn merchants.

No put on your jackboots and shut the fuck up like a good little fascist, or else.

Re:What else does?

[Gorshkov]

Saying "based on this individual kid's history, by talking to him as well as his parents and peers, and psychological evaluation by a professional (all reasonable steps taken when an adult does this), he should be suspended because the school board is convinced that he will definitely attempt to kill his teacher if he remains here" is far more acceptable.

So what you are saying is that everybody gets a free pass untill they've done something so that they HAVE a history.

It was *reasonable* for the teacher to have been worried about his safety, given what's been happening in schools the last few years.

It was *reasonable* for the school to be worried about the threat against a staff member.

And it was VERY reaonsable for the school to suspend him for a term to teach him that threatening his teachers is NOT acceptable.

I wish the hell everybody here would stop seeing every bloody court case in the world as part of some plot by some conspiracy to trample the rights of the population under the heel of (your favorite conspiracy group here).

Let's have some perspective, folks. The kid fucked up - BIG time. He threatened a teacher, and got turfed from school for it. Am I the only one here who thinks this is common sense?

Re:Why is this even in court?

[Dhalka226]

A death threat (even if only displayed in own home) is worse than that.

You answered your own question. It's essentially a years-old debate about how far a school's authority should extend beyond its doors. I recall once when I was in sixth grade, I believe, I called some girl a bitch as we were walking home (she hit one of my friends with her bike as we were walking along the sidewalk). We were practically home. It was about three blocks away from school at the time. The next day, of course, I was called into the principal's office. (On another sort of annoying point, I seem to have been called in because the girl happened to be black. Now come on, if it had been race related, I could have come up with a better word than "bitch" yaknow?)

Nothing ultimately happened, but I still question whether the school should have been involved at all. It's the same issue here.

Is a death-threat against a teacher bad? Yes. But it obviously was not really serious. If it had been, when he was handed over to the police, they wouldn't have concluded it was a joke--and he likely would have been expelled, as well, if they truly thought it serious and not a joke (which their own psychologist also determined). After all, if a student was seriously threatening a teacher's life, he would just be more pissed off and more likely to make good on his threats when he came back from a suspension for it. So let's be honest with ourselves: It wasn't the death threat that got him in trouble, it was the age-old "you have to be nice to your teachers" rule in the form of a "death threat."

Assuming I were a student in this school/class, if a friend and I are talking in my room about this teacher and, using your words, I suggest he should go suck donkey balls, should he be able to report me and get me suspended? At what point does their jurisdiction end? Surely they are not the police force of the Internet, are they? I think the proper reaction would be to turn it over to the police--which they did--and then butt out and let them handle it.

They essentially held this kid back because of what both the police force and their own psychologist concluded was a joke. That is well beyond excessive, even if they should have some right to suspend him for something he says on the Internet to begin with--which I don't think they should.

Re:what did he expect?

[MrNaz]

Children need to learn what it means to be a productive, positive influence on the world around them. Having said that, I have absolutely no idea, and cannot comment on where to draw the line between childrens' rights to be children and society's right to ensure healthy upbringing. Furthermore, I have no idea what exactly constitutes and healthy upbringing and what does not. These questions need to be investigated by those experienced in handling children with compassion. That means your professional school principles who handle 10,000 children a year but hever married and had children of their own are not up to the task.

On a similar note, I think the idea that schools could or should act in place of parents is just loco, señor. Children need parents who see them as their flesh and blood, not teachers who see them collectively as a job.

Oh, and I have no idea how that kid should have been dealt with. However, missing out on a semester is counter productive, as whatever anger and resentment now has a semester to fester. When I was a kid, pulling stunts like that got me a belting from my folks. Thats what this world needs more of. parents who aren't scared to give their kids a spanking. Long-winded psychological games don't work and just build resentment long after the child has forgotten what he or she did in the first place.

Steal cookie.
Spank.
End.

It's a much closer association with what not to do, and over time as the child grows they will learn why stealing is bad. Week-long groundings or confiscation of the X-Box don't get associated with whatever the child did to cause it. I went to a friend's house where a child had been banned from X-Box for a week due to hitting his 3yo sister with a book. After having a chat with him he said he was grounded coz his parents were stupid. I asked him why they took it away and as far as I could tell he didn't even know. It had been 3 days since the incident.

Childrens' perception of time is completely different to adults'. For an 8yo, one week is an immesurably long period of time. Remember how long it took for the weekends to arrive? How unimaginably far away the summer holidays seemed even though it was only 3 weeks away? Fast forward, and me, as a 27 year old, can blink and miss an entire month.

All this rambling really boils down to me trying to say that children need more than regimented procedure, school rule books and "politically correct" punishment. They need the love, support and firm guidance that only a real parent or honest socially aware teacher can provide. I know many loving parents, but honest, socially aware teachers are few and far between.

Little bit of free speach right here

[ZakuSage]

The kid at home should be free to say what he wants or put whatever he wants on his IM. It's the new USA; people don't have the right to say what they want, or do what they want anymore. This kid did nothing harmful, and represented no threat at all. Friends of mine draw pictures of fetuses killing themselves and hand them in art portfolios in my school system, but thank our lucky maple leaf we live in Canada, where people still have some god damn rights. Fuck the American government, fuck the USA: your county's fucking screwed.

Re:Reality Check

[MikeBabcock]

I think the term has become much more coloquial than you might realize.

"I'm gonna kill you" is a joke in many cases, to laugh at. Such as "I told the waiter its your birthday" ... "I'm gonna kill you!"

Context is important.

That said, as another poster pointed out, this is a discipline issue, not a federal crime issue. As such, the school should be allowed to limit speach beyond what would be reasonable for the state to do.