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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).'"
Remember the good ol' days when people would just burn effigies of those they didn't like?
I don't think that the principal should have so much power over the IT staff. IT should do his job: keeping the IT services running. He shouldnät waste his time doing private stuff for the principal.
The principal seems to be such a nice guy! *rolls eyes*
He was probably just pissed because someone managed to create a page about him on myspace, while he had been desperately trying to do the same but couldn't fit his ego onto the page...
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Ok, I can see why he wouldn't want students looking at it during school time, but I think the real reason he went after them was his own ego. Students do waste time at school, and adults waste time at work, but do you really think he would have pulled out all the stops if this page wasn't aimed at him?
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
How insecure does this guy have to be to sue students? Can't he just try to suspend them for a few days or make them clean the school toilets with tooth brushes? I bet he sucks his thumb at night too.
I don't see the relevance of it being a MySpace profile. When I was at school (12 years ago) MySpace didn't exist and yet the head teacher still had cause to gather all the pupils together once or twice to try to ascertain the culprits behind a fake, and horribly libelous, newsletter detailing the fictious activities of some of the teaching staff. It was produced by some malicious students and distributed around the classrooms. Exactly the same thing, just in a less connected world.
This issue is about the discipline of students, dealing with a prank in an appropriate manner, and ultimately finding the reason why some people find it funny to be disrespectful to someone (hopefully) dedicated to improving their future. If MySpace, or even the internet itself, vanished overnight it'd still happen as much as it does now.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Why does every little problem now have to be solved by the court? Common sense, compromise (or in the case of kids, discipline by parents and teachers) used to solve petty things like this.
"cancellation of computer programming classes as well as usage of computers for research for class projects."
Nice to see that this guy holds the student's education as a high priority. Who needs to be able to search the web for research purposes or to lean how to code?
Ii wonder if he is going to sue himself next, as he was the one that created the circumstances for this damage. It was not the students actions (some childish prank that was rather unremarkable) but his own ego that led to the damage to his 'earning potential'. Maybe he didn't understand the meaning of the word earn: his egotrip earned him ridicule, which is a just reward for him
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Quick! Tell the principle to sign up for ReputationDefender.com!
If the principal's earning potential was affected, it was due solely to how he handeled the situation. I didn't know you could sue someone for putting you in the position to demonstrate your incompetence to your superiors...
I work in a UK school doing IT support so I have a front line view of what happens.
At a county level we have a fitler that works on basic URL blocking. It's called 'SmartFilter' and it's definately not very 'Smart'. Pupils can easily evade this filter by using CGI:Proxy, PHPProxy, Google Translate or Google Cache for example. Basically as long as the url doesn't match something in it's blacklist, it gets through.
Therefore, at a school level I have implmented a Linux/Squid based proxy with a content filter called DansGuardian. It's a lot more intelligent about filtering and works along the same lines as antispam filters. As well as domain/url blocking it allows grey listing based on the content of the web pages being pulled through it. You assign words or phrases a numerical value and if the page hits a certain score then it's blocked. As the filter is no longer simply relying on the domains/urls this solves the proxy problem.
Yes, some stuff will always get through, I think the above solution is about as good as it gets currently.
principal targeted by the pranksters attempted to find the perpetrators
It would be wiser to monitor the school network to identify the people who where capable to modify the specific webpage. You could make the phrank die out silently, or convert the page to a more friendly nature.
The principal, he has diserved this. Being so immature.
if he'd simply asked Myspace to remove the offending pages. http://www.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=misc.f aq&Category=9&Question=39
If he'd done that instead of making such a big deal of the matter, he wouldn't have brought so much attention to his little problem.
Shouldn't he be the adult here. The one to take the higher ground. This almost sounds like a school yard fight between two "children". He's probably done more damage whining like a little bitch than if he just ignored it, rather than it being a localized issue hes taken it to the next step.
no matter how good it is, it is human nature always wants to make things better
No, kids! Don't look at my fake MySpace profile! I demand you don't! I'm really, really, serious!!
By over-reacting he has called far more attention on himself and, in turn, the school district and community at large. And not the good kind of attention.
He should have just gone with it, and had fun with it. And maybe, just maybe, use it as an easy-to-access tool to assess what the students think of his methodology? I know, criticism is a lost art.
Personally, I would have just created a fake profile of the kid that made it and photoshopped him to wear a frilly pink tutu and had a good laugh with the kid (whilst dodging his parents).
...but let me defend the principal, at least on some grounds.
These teenagers, as well as most teenagers in general, do not understand and will not consider implications of their actions before doing something stupid. They especially don't understand that when you post something on the internet, it is a form of publication; the world is able to read what you wrote. Purposefully publishing lies in printed form with the willful intent to harm someone's reputation is called slander, and is punishable by law. These kids clearly did exactly that. The principal's daughter was emotionally distraught when she discovered the pages, as well as the principal. The student's work was malicious in nature. An apology isn't going to make up for the harm that was done.
I will agree that the principal overreacted in regards to obliterating access to a computer in the school, but I can understand where his anger is coming from.
Statement from Justin Layshock's parents on why they brought suit
Original MySpace page created by Justin Layshock
To say the principal and school board are overreacting would be putting it mildly.reminds me of two quotations from mark twain:
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
No, spoken defamation is slander. Published defamation is libel. If a reasonable person would not believe a statement, then damage to reputation can not occur and hence it is not defamatory. For example, you could argue that a reasonable person would not believe a MySpace page purporting to be from a school principal admitting to being a paedophile, and so it would not be defamatory. I can say "George Bush told me that he has sex with goats" and this is not defamatory because it is ridiculous.
It always suprises me that a large percentage of people will generally state that the victimised "adult" should "turn the other cheek" and forget it as it's just a bunch of kids. I look at some of the kids in my childrens school and eevn though it's a pretty good, a lot of them are truly vicious and amazingly horrid to other kids for no reason, and usually they are like this for no reason other than they are spoilt little sh*ts who'd run home and cry to their mum if they copped the treament they dished out. Fine and good to say it's just kids being kids, but we aren't talking about putting worms in the microwave, or other similar less soul destroying pranks are we? Until you have been in a situation like this, or even had one of your own kids in this situation like I have, you can't even begin to imagine the complete and utter despair, hopelessness, and complete sense of futility and frustration these victims feel at the hands of these gutless bullies. It actually makes you begin to understand why you read so often about kids that have been pushed to the end of their tether and then go in to school with a gun. The power these cowards attempt to wield at the painful expense of others should not be ignored, Minority groups want to give the kids more rights, we're told kids are equal to and should be treated like adults, discipline and punishment are illegal. WAKE UP! We are talking for the most part about irresponsible, immature, children! We are breeding a generation of hopeless, aimless CHILDREN who are constantly told they have all the rights of adults, but without any of the accompanying responsibility so they learn a healthy respect for others, and life in general. Whether or not the Principal was a prick or not doesn't matter, he and his family have been cruelly and visiously attacked by anonymous and gutless cowards, I say sue the pants off them! Even if he doesn't get any settlement, maybe these brats might learn the idea that actions may have actually have consequences! Theres an idea! And to all the people saying "so what", if it was your little darling that the principal published such guttertrash lies about in an international forum, would you still be saying, "it's only words, don't worry about it and it will go away"? "WORDS WILL NEVER HURT ME", what a load of crap! Tell that to a victim of these kids that should be sent to military school for these horrible actions.
The proper thing to do here is:
- Ask myspace to take the page down
- Secretly install keyloggers in the school computers, get the culprit's myspace account, and put furry porn on it
50 years ago, when my father was in military college, they once went to the nearby airfield and brought in (by hand!!!) a DC-3 plane and set it in the middle of the main garden. The stunt includes flattenning a chain-link fence between the airfield and the garden. Also, a staff seargent who was overly fond of his Morris Mini Cooper often found it perched on top of the decorative fountain...
Seriously.
... so it was just socially assumed he was some kind of pedophile or something. He quit after one year (I'm guessing because of the rumors and such). Thanks to that, I never got to take a real programming course in high school (he was the only teacher with the backgrouind for it ... it was a small town school in the 80's).
... not the flattering kind. You don't know anything about computers. Your IT guy (apparently) dosen't know anything about computers.
Think for a minute what it's like to be a MALE teacher, in an overwhelmingly FEMALE dominated arena. I had two male teachers growing up. One of them was involved in a real sex scandal. The other was an incredibly gifted math and computer science teacher with mediocre social skills. He was a geek, and into computers, and shy
So. You've been in this game long enough to make it up to administrator, and principal. All it takes is a *HINT* of impropriety to get your ass fired by the school board.
So some smartass teenagers make a myspace page about you
What would YOU do? You have a family to support, this is your livelihood.
Not saying everything the guy did was right, but try that shoe on the other foot for a minute. I think I understand where he was coming from.
The same could apply to the kids now facing the legal consequences of their actions, no?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
While I think you're over-generalizing a tad (I've met teens that were much smarter than college students so not all teens are idiots), I would dare say it's the principal's job to assist in the education of the teens in his school, including the one who put up the fake MySpace profile. Exactly what type of lesson has he taught them from all of this? That adults act like a bunch of kids fighting on the playground when insulted? That even the principal, the highest authority in their school will act like a total idiot and neglect his job duties to go on a personal vendetta when he discovers his students are insulting him? Sure what the kid did was libel (not slander, slander's spoken), but the principal has completely failed in his duties and provided a perfectly horrible example to ALL of his students, not just the one who put up the fake profile. There's no defending that part, suing over the libel? Sure, not a problem. Diverting school resources to a personal vendetta? Now that's a major problem, and much worse than the libel the kid did because it affected the education of every damn kid in the school.
One thing you failed to mention is that the kid created the libelous profile from home, not from one of the school's computers. The principal used pretty much all of the school's computing resources to go on a personal vendetta against the kids (the one who created the profile plus students posting comments on it). I'd say neither one was considering the implications of their actions ahead of time.
So sue, don't disrupt the entire damn school and fuck up the education of hundreds of kids just because you were "emotionally distraught". We pay teachers, and principals even more so, to deal with this type of stuff and to educate our kids. Also think about what's happened with this thanks to the principal's over reaction. How emotionally distraught do you think his daughter is about his looking like a total ass in front of the entire nation now? What's worse is he can't blame this on libel, people are going to look at his actions and come to their own conclusions, but many are going to think he's acting like a spoiled brat.
You kinda contradict yourself here, how can "the student's work [be] malicious in nature" if he "do[es] not understand and [did] not consider [the] implications of their actions before doing something stupid"? You can't have it both ways, if they didn't understand then it wasn't malicious, if they did understand then it was. In the first case I think an apology would have worked just fine, IF the principal hadn't over reacted and escalated this into a much larger issue than it could have been. Now that he's managed to drag it into the national spotlight I suppose an apology won't cut it, but neither will winning a lawsuit against the student get his reputation back. He's earned a new reputation for himself, one not based on the profile's libelous claims at all, and this reputation isn't beneficial to him either.
Jesus, you're part of the problem.
Welcome to the brave new world. Bullies have new tools and methods to use to screw with your precious little child. Either you armed your child with the correct tools to deal with the issue or you didn't. Sounds like you didn't. The environment is going to do things to you and your family that are outside your control, you are helpless. If your child doesn't have established coping mechanisms and the iron will self esteem needed to deal with the harsh environment that you are partially responsible for creating, then you failed.
It's never going to go backwards. It's never going to be like the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, or 90's again. Peer pressure has taken a new form and uses new routes to reach your children. Crying "OH MY GOD!, You people don't understand what this is doing!" is beyond unproductive - it's fucking moronic.
Evaluate and counteract, estimate and prepare - get a copy of the Art of War for Christ's sake. Arm your children with the self esteem they need to maneuver through the meat grinder that is school.
- Mark Twain, Following the Equator; Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
Which is great until a future employer searches for his Myspace profile and comes up with a number of ones detailing his drug habits and penchant for women's clothing.
It's one thing to prank someone for something that can be removed, but it's quite another to ruin someone's employability. Would you think it's funny if you went job hunting only to find out that someone you knew was calling all your prospective employers behind your back and telling them all about your drinking binges in college and how much pot you used to smoke?
What if they had done it to another student? Would you feel the same way? What if the students posted a fake Myspace profile for your child mentioning that he is homosexual and wants to become transgendered, enjoys copious amounts of Heroin and Steroids and frequently has sex with strangers. Is that such a minor act?
SRSLY.
The school system, with the exception of a few special teachers, is an exercise in mind-programming. --Specifically, making sure that people grow up with a powerful, nearly hard-wired respect for authority and control systems. Training kids to be good little workers.
I barely survived high school exactly because of crazy authority figures. I was never rude, I was never mean-spirited. I simply came to the realization that school was 95% boring, brain-washing busy-work and stopped attending all but one class which I needed in order to graduate and get my 'piece of paper'. I'd already been accepted into the college of my choice, so the whole graduating process was purely a formality. I figured, "Why waste my time going to a bunch of classes I sleep through anyway?"
Many of the teachers didn't even notice. A few of the cool ones said, "Yeah. That makes sense. Good luck!"
A remaining clutch of staff members, however, perceived my actions as a personal attack of the worst sort and made it a top priority to prevent me from graduating. It had nothing to do with rules and everything to do with what they thought of as disrespectful behavior on my part. They thought I was cheating the system, which I suppose I was. (But then, I figured that the system was cheating everybody, so I wasn't about to feel guilty about not jumping through a bunch of silly hoops.)
I remember teachers saying, "But you'll get failing marks!" And I remember saying, "And. . ? Do you really believe I'm going to let a piece of paper stop me from traveling the world and doing all the things I want to do in life? If an employer is unable to see me for who I am without consulting my high school grades, then why on earth would I want to work for such a person? Whatever job they are offering is probably going to be more of the same stuff they pace kids with in high school anyway. No thanks."
"But you'll only ever be able to work as a cashier. As a burger flipper!"
"No. That's only true if you believe it, which I don't. --I spent last Summer working at a cool company which I found simply by walking in off the street to visit. I expressed keen interest in learning about what they did, and they let me hang around and help out. By the end of the Summer, they'd offered me a high-paying full-time position with lots of growth potential. I turned it down so I could come back here and finish my high school off and get my piece of paper. How foolish was that?" (I'd been conned into believing that the school system and its graduating certificates actually meant something. That programming took some time to undo, by which point I was already in the last third of the last year and pulling my hair out.)
Anyway, they were really upset that somebody would dare point out the flaws in the edifice of the 'unquestionable authority' which the school system was supposed to represent, and which they felt children must yield to, kneel before, fear and be willing to jump through hoops for. Instead, I just looked at it and yawned. This made some of the adults in charge fume with rage and indignation. I still don't fully understand why.
My parents were called, legalities were threatened, they tried to make me sign agreements through physical intimidation. It was all very strange. --I remember around the same time, one fellow in a suit who I'd never seen before, actually chased me down the hall, grabbed me by the arm and blustered in my face, "When you are a professional, you will understand that you cannot criticize another professional!" (Or something to that effect.) --I'd made the mistake of reading and laughing at a posted flyer for a course he was apparently in charge of and which I thought was ridiculous. I laughingly explained why I thought so to a friend, and bluster-man happened to be standing right behind me.
Maybe, deep down, such people know that they have ridiculous, frustratingly broken job descriptions and rather than just deal with it honestly or change things, they instead try to
If this guy was the President of the United States he'd probably have decalred martial law and then used the Secret Service and the National Guard to conduct a manhunt for the guy who made fun of him.
Beaten to the punch.
What?
Lighten Up! It's a prank, and it's not even a malicious prank, it's a stupid digital profile on a stupid site that only 13 yr olds go to... The principle does not have the "right" to hunt down the people that put up a fake profile, and especially not with tax payers money. If it bothers him, he's more than welcome to contact the site and request his profile be removed, and create his own profile with the information he wants in it. But good grief, you make it sound like the kids took baseball bats and broke his legs. It's not that serious... Everyone always says the current generation is horrid (oh lets remember the 50's and that EVIL rock and roll that was going to ruin society, and lets not get the 60's with all of the hippy's, and my very own, Generation X) and we have to do something about it, but the truth is our society continues to learn and improve, and these "horrid" kids don't all end up as druggies and bank robbers. So Don't worry, Relax, and if it's your thing, have a homebrew, but please don't encourage this idiot taking a personal attack from students a valid reason to waste taxpayer money and cut programs that could lead to these kids actually learning something. Sam