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

Remember..

[C0R1D4N]

Remember the good ol' days when people would just burn effigies of those they didn't like?

Re:Remember..

[arivanov]

Well...

We used to lift cars on top of 4 garbage bins (of the older metal cylindrical variety). Worked a treat. An old Skoda, Fiat or ZAZ weight under 600 kg so all it took was 10+ determined students and 20 seconds. So the teacher comes out and starts swearing not knowing what to do. The car is perched precariously 1m from the ground and there is no way to get it down without either negotiating with the students (and trusting them that they do not "unintentionally" drop it) or calling in heavy lifting equipment.

A funnier version of the same prank used to be done in a couple of schools which were located in old turn of the century buildings will proper 6+m wide main staircases and corridors. I know of at least 2 cases where the principal walked out of his office on the second floor to stumble into his skoda "parked" in the corridor.

And nowdays... Myspace... whimps...

Re:Remember..

[Ihlosi]

We used to lift cars on top of 4 garbage bins (of the older metal cylindrical variety). Worked a treat. An old Skoda, Fiat or ZAZ weight under 600 kg

Didn't you read TFA ? This is America. You're lucky that the students don't weigh 600 kg (yet), and if a car weighs only four times that, it's considered too light and therefore unsafe.

Why do they have so much power?

[emilv]

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.

Re:Why do they have so much power?

[stuffman64]

Well, I graduated high school 6 years ago, from the school right next to Hickory High. It's not a big area, and when we say "IT Department" we usually mean one guy who manages the computer labs and the classroom computers, and student assistants. There's a district supervisor who helps out with big issues (I wonder if it's still Scott... he was a cool guy). Most of the technical solutions such as firewalls, etc. are barebones to meet bugetary constraints, so I wouldn't imagine it hard to bypass. There's only so much you can do on a limited budget with limited resources. I know my IT guy also taught two classes (there were only 4 periods in a day at my school), so a lot of the work was left up to the "technology assistants" (i.e., me). Hickory was a little larger than my school, but I doubt they had significantly more resources than we did. I doubt that there was so much going on there that the IT guy was stressed doing this "extra" work. Hell, we spent most of the time just trying to think of stuff to do.

Too sensitive....

[MLease]

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

This is not about MySpace.

[onion2k]

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.

Litigation, Litigation, Litigation

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Something doo economics. Anyone? Anyone?

[marto]

"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?

He could have saved a lot of trouble...

[wesley78]

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.

Re:Remember..when the principal was the adult?

[teknosapien]

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.

Original Case Documents

[Broofa]

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.

Re:Remember..when the principal was the adult?

[aarggh]

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.

Re:Remember..when the principal was the adult?

[Strilanc]

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

Re:Remember..when the principal was the adult?

[timeOday]

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!

I think you are mixing up this incident with bullying, which it is not. It's a fake myspace profile about a principal. It's like passing an insulting note about the teacher around class. Yes it's naughty, yes the offender should be disciplined in some appropriate manner. But when it reaches the point of diverting thousands of dollars in limited educational resources, it starts to smell of personal vendetta. And yes, I do expect more childish behavior from children than pricipals, so don't say it should be the same as if it happened the other way around. I have a defiant child and I know it's frustrating to be defied. But going to the ends of the earth to seek revenge for a minor act just gives the child more power and control. It doesn't sound to me like this principal is on the right path to inspiring excellence in his students.

They School System is for the Birds.

[Fantastic Lad]

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

Re:Remember..when the principal was the adult?

[iminplaya]

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.