Principal Cancels Classes, Sues Over MySpace Prank

Earnest writes "A prank MySpace page has led to a barrage of lawsuits and the misuse of school resources as the principal targeted by the pranksters attempted to find the perpetrators. In 2005, students at Hickory High School in Pennsylvania created a fake MySpace profile of principal Eric Trosch. As a result, the school's IT staff spent about 25 percent of his work time dealing with the issue and finding the culprits. That's not all. 'Trosch kept at it, even taking measures that led to the "cancellation of computer programming classes as well as usage of computers for research for class projects." Now the basic educational mission of the school was being compromised in order to keep students from visiting these profiles during school hours (students were still free to look at the profiles from home, of course).'"

Comments

They're Lucky I'm Not Their Principal

[littlewink]

I would have called the entire school body into session and told them of the site. I would then announce the following:

The guilty parties would have 3 days to come forward and acknowledge both in public and in writing what they did. They would then subsequently be required to remove the site(s) under supervision.

If the guilty did as specified then I would give each a week's suspension and require that they pass the remainder of the term without sports or other extracurricular activities.

If they did not do as I specified, then I would call in the police and prosecute and expel the guilty parties, not necessarily in that order.

I would NOT announce the following, but for those who did NOT confess:

I would personally do my best to ensure that they repeat the year in school. Thus they would fall behind their classmates and their mental development would undoubtedly be permanently stunted (guaranteeing that they later become criminals, to be locked up by the state for their future malfeasances).

IOW unless they confessed they would likely be AFU'd for the rest of their life, whether the ACLU or any number of lawyers was involved or not. Which only seems fair to me. Life is too short for this kind of crap and these "children" are far too late in learning that lesson. It's time to permanently stamp an "A" ("AssHat") on their foreheads, if only to warn others.

BTW logging is far more useful than filtering, especially when presented in court coordinated with videos of the computer room.

Hitler and Naziism!

[walter.dufresne]

Invoked 'em both first!