Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Photos Land Eden Prairie Kids in Trouble
slim-t writes "The Star Tribune is reporting that students have been disciplined for photos of them on Facebook. 'Eden Prairie High School administrators have reprimanded more than 100 students and suspended some from sports and other extracurricular activities after obtaining Facebook photos of students partying, several students said Tuesday.' Is the school right to do this? My opinion is that the students should know not to post pictures of yourself breaking the law."
I'd just like to know what all those administrators are doing cruising Facebook pages looking at the students in their school.
Looking for delectable jailbait, of course.
Won't somebody think of the children?
...
Er, wait
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Really, it seems kind of strange that school administrators would find these kinds of things without someone explicitly bringing it to their attention. Don't they have better things to do than sit around and look at pictures of the students? The argument could be made that this is pretty creepy.
Also, if the students are breaking the law outside of school hours, isn't that a matter for the police and not the school?
Sure makes you wonder, doesn't it.
I don;t use Facebook, but don't they have a feature to group people by what school they attend? An administrator would just have to sign up for his own school then just browse profiles while filling out detention slips.
Maybe it will be a good lesson to these idiots not to document their wrong-doing.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
Reminds me of this NYT article on some George Washington University students who trapped their administration busting parties and had a great time at it as well!
This would seem to aid one of my longtime complaints; namely, that many schools at all levels of education spend far too much money on administrators and not enough on teachers... If they have time to be nosing around students' lives on Facebook, they probably don't have enough real administrative work to do.
Time to repeal the drinking age.
This isn't a "rights online" question. It's a natural consequence of the stupid prohibition laws we have. They need to be repealed.
If the only way anyone found out about the drinking was looking at Facebook after the fact, then how was it harmful?
I think that the kids are pretty stupid to post photos of themselves doing illegal things on the Internet, but neither is it the administrators' business to be scouring Facebook for such things. Their job is to deal with things as they're brought to their attention, not be a surveillance force.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I'd like to know how the fuck school officials are allowed to discipline students for activities not relating to school. That's the realm of police, is it not? You got together with friends to party? Nothing to do with school.
What the hell, man? I've asked before and I ask again: what the hell gives schools such a wide bullshit jurisdiction?
Perception is the thin dividing line between reality and fiction.
First off, the kid is a liar.
Second of all, if he's freely distributing evidence of himself breaking the law, he's lucky it's just his school that is punishing him.
Third, he's lucky it's just him getting punished and not his parents.
Kid breaks law, gets in trouble. The internet was mildly involved. News at 10:00. Bitching on Slashdot at 9:30.
She scans her students myspace pages all the time. It's pretty incredible what kind of information they put up.
:)
She doesn't do it because she's out to get them, though. If she learned that a student was smoking weed at a weekend party, it's not like she'd call the cops on them. I think she does it just to get a better sense of who her students are as individuals, and can then better tailor her instructions to each individual.
Let's say Katie is really emotional, and loves to answer questions in class. However, Katie has just gone through a rough breakup with her longtime boyfriend (we learn over myspace)... My wife would be a bit more understanding about why Katie is acting so depressed.
Or, she may learn that a student routinely smokes pot in the bathroom every morning before class. She might pay extra attention to that student, and if she smells pot on the kid while he's in class, she can certainly get the administration involved.
Or kids might comment about a stolen test. Or how they hacked into the computers and changed grades. It's crazy what they'll write about.
The point is, of course, don't put up information that you don't want your boss, teacher/SO/parents/whoever to read.
Posting anonymously for hopefully obvious reasons.
Supposedly the pics were delivered on a CD (maybe a DVD) to school administrators. The person who delivered it is either unknown or not being identified. (disclosure/source: My sister-in-law attends EPHS. I'm anonymous for her sake.)
Its simple, you get caught drinking in any means then you deserve the punishment.
Now if they cant prove that there is alcohol in your drink, then more power to you, but you got off easy this time.
These kids are in high school, wait till they get to college and some of them join the athletic programs. They will spend several hours in NCAA compliance meetings, signing papers, and reviewing every single detail about drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and felony's. Trust me, I got busted for alcohol and they didn't even have pictures of me drinking. Now this only applies to athletes but other programs do have similar measures to protect the image of the school.
Additionally, you sign your life and image over to the school and NCAA, which means if your a stellar athlete then they can use your picture and likeness to promote the school or sport. The pressure to be more protective about what you do and what is seen increases. These kids are getting a lesson about privacy and being mature. I knew of one great athlete in college, a good friend who could break 4:00 in the mile, he didn't get facebook till the day he was done competing cause of all the athletes around him who got in trouble.
Knowing several teachers, I have to ask this: is it at all (naively) possible that this admin is doing what he thought best? It seems to me like he's trying to straighten out these kids' lives (at least by his interpretation of life, mind you.)
It's surprising, I know, but some teachers actually care about their students. Not just whether they make the school look good at scholastic meets and football games, not just whether they pass all their (irrelevant) standardized tests. Some teachers care whether or not Joe Quarterback makes it home from prom nite. They actually care whether Suzie Cheerleader makes it home from prom nite unfertilized.
Just a thought. I didn't have the greatest high school experiences myself, but even I know not all school officials are malicious animals prowling 'That Facebook Thing' for whom they may devour.
There is, in fact, some middle ground left to on which to stand.
Notice to all: Timothy has given up the right to Google for people that he meets in life.
I assume it was some kind of less popular kid that turned them all in. Nice anonymous work. We salute you.
*Someone* has to be factually innocent and have parents with enough cash to send their kid to the Dean's office with a lawyer (or enough time to come themselves). Please, just once, I want to see the look on the Dean's face..
Just to clear up how the school got the picks.
The pictures where snail mailed to the school office on a CD that someone had compiled according to the local news. This clears the idea that teachers are spending time looking up students on line and add credit to the theory that the person who tipped of the principal is a fellow student.
Being Swedish I find your alcohol policy absolutely bizarre. Schools policing students about what they do in their spare time? If a teacher did that over here they would probably get into legal difficulties as a result of it... Heck, my physics department has a student run pub in the basement and one of my lecturers even gave the students some time to advertise it. Despite of this ( or maybe because of ) we have a lower rate of alcohol induced diseases and a lower alcohol related crime rate.
I'm guessing this is the consequence of some "traditional" political opinions, much like Sweden insisting on having a state monopoly on alcohol, despite it being quite clearly demonstrated that it does nothing to prevent minors from obtaining it ( which is pretty much the argument in favor ).
Personally, at my school, they have a policy that if you violate a policy outside of school grounds within sight of a school official, or a school official is latter reported of the policy you broke, you will be reprimanded as if you were on school premise. People don't seem to remember that youth are still citizens, and are granted all the rights of the constitution. Schools extend and deploy their power in scary ways, forever under the umbrella "For the Children."
http://www.youthrights.org/
Ok, some may say that this strains reasonable doubt, but. . . let's say you find a picture of a kid on the Internet, and he's holding a Budweiser bottle in his hand, and appears to be drinking from it. . .
The bottle could, maybe, be empty. If the picture makes it obvious it's not empty, it could have water, or lemonade, or ice tea, or Cola, or. . . you get the point, in it. It's *probably* beer, but I wouldn't put it past kids to think it was a cool prank to take an old empty they found somewhere, wash it, then fill it with soda and take pictures.
The point is, a picture of someone drinking from a beer/vodka/whiskey/wine bottle does not PROVE that they were drinking alcohol. I would say it's, on the face of it, impossible to prove someone was imbibing illegal substances based on a photograph. The only way to really prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, in my opinion, is if you could actually test the liquid in the bottle somehow (smell, taste, chemical analysis), or by getting a urine/blood sample from one of the kids in the picture close to the time the picture was taken.
Other types of offenses might be provable from pictures (inappropriate nudity, sexual misconduct, etc), but not underage drinking.
You say you're a nerd who is picked on by the popular jocks. Do I have a plan for you!
1) Take a buddy nerd and sneak into a party where your victim will be (since you're a nerd you obviously weren't invited)
2) Hand the jock a beer, have your friend snap a picture during that second he's holding it (but before you're being pounded with it)
3) Post picture to Facebook using a fake account
4) Wait for jock to be suspended
I'm still trying to figure out how to fit "Profit!" into there as well. Maybe blackmail?
All these "well you shouldn't have posted the picture" posts are forgetting the very common case where someone snaps pictures of a bunch of people and posts them all onto Facebook. It's amazing how fast the camera phones can go off if you do something stupid even for a second at a party.
Our thinking seems to be devolved from "what kind of society do we want to live in?" to "what's in it for me, right now?" If doing X makes you "safer" or "happier" right now, it doesn't matter what the consequences are. It's just that we don't seem to be able to reason past the next couple weeks anymore! The lack of outrage over over-prescribed medication, random drug testing, schools spying on students, the sex offender registry, and warrantless wiretaps points to a huge "it doesn't affect me right now, so I don't give a shit" attitude. It's the moral reasoning of a two year old.
What happens if someone underage (intentionally) posts pictures of themselves drinking ginger ale out of red plastic cups and a school decides to discipline that student for what they believe to be a beer??? I smell major lawsuit! Hell, that student could even have that administrator arrested for filing a false police report! (After all, if a student were to make an unfounded claim like "this teacher touched me", that student would be in deep shit. What's the difference if a school administrator makes an unfounded claim like "this student was underage drinking" just because they saw something yellowish in a cup???)
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
Hmm, standard operating procedure for theater -- even with adult actors, you don't want them getting drunk and screwing up the performance -- and any drama students would likely be familiar with it.
A bit more on-topic, I remember a guy in middle school who used to drink soda out of a bottle in a paper bag at lunch, just to bait school officials into checking what he was drinking. Of course, in that case, the bottle was right there and they could verify it easily.
Its not the schools job or duty to police after-hours activities.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
- A fellow fourth grade student was caught possessing a beeper at school. FCPS believed the only reason anyone would possess a beeper would be to facilitate selling drugs. The student was expelled. His mother had given him the beeper the previous day so he would know when she was ready to pick him up from soccer practice. FCPS kept the ban on cell phones and beepers until 9/11, but not before threatening to suspend students who were trying to contact parents who worked in the Pentagon that day.
- A girl at my middle school was caught with a can of pepper spray. Her parents had given her the mace because she lived less than one mile from the school (FCPS does not provide transportation to students less than 1 mi from school) and had to walk through a rough neighborhood each day. She was suspended.
- My school once let out early and had a student fair on the soccer field. Attendance on the field was not mandatory, but students could not leave school grounds without a note from a parent. The administration was so concerned with our attendance that every student who left early had their car fully searched to make sure they weren't taking home other students.
Unfortunately, FCPS holds all bargaining chips before students even enroll. They force each student sign a "Student Responsibilities and Rights" document essentially stating you understand FCPS has the right to deal with you any way they please should you screw up. If you don't sign it, they won't give you a locker, a parking spot, nor allow you to participate in after school activities.If school administrators stumble upon pictures of a student doing something illegal, but not while at school, they should report it to the police, and the buck stops there. If a student's "extra-cirricular" activities don't interfere with school, then schools shouldn't interfere with them.
When I was a teenager, I had a friend who saw the school principal at the grocery store. After making eye contact, he gave him the middle finger. The principal was understandably irate and the following Monday suspended him.
When his parents found out, they called the principal and made it abundantly clear that he was far, far outside his bounds and pushed until the school rescinded the suspension. Don't think he didn't suffer consequences, they were just delivered by his parents whose duty it is to do so outside of school.
The duty of school officials is to discipline and teach students within the school environment. From 8-3 or on school grounds, that's it. Period. The minute the child leaves school grounds, he's under the purview of the law and his guardians. The second school officials leave the school grounds, they're just average folks. No legitimate power over and above any other schmo.
Where I work, checking these sites is increasingly common- a friend recently had a scare where a student posted a violent rant on his page, pictures of grenades included. Should schools rely on students to carry reports of potentially worrying situations, or do they take advantage of very public information and be warned of potential problems early?
There's also been cases where students have created (public) groups ranting about school issues that they might never bring up directly; knowing about it means a chance to address concerns before they fester.
And worst case, sure, I've seen students pulled aside and quietly reminded that whatever they post online is there for all to see. When you're young, you may not think about it much... up until the day that you're paying some private investigator megabucks to bury your history from potential employers.
Insofar as what gets posted doesn't affect them during the schoolday, not much would be done, but when it comes down to "I hate teacher X and I have a grenade", it's awfully nice to have warning.
The high school I went to has recently done this same thing, except with MySpace; and they went even farther than just judging the students' photos: if the students had anything on their page at all that the school deemed "innappropriate" (including the song on their profile) they were punished in school. I really find this to be disgusting. What kids do outside of the school should have no standing on what they are allowed to do in school. My blood is hot just thinking about it.
Question? Since when did the school become a defacto legal system for students? What happens off of school grounds is really none of the schools business. This is a major encroachment on their personal privacy, and liberty.
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
A few girls in my 12th grade English class last year got into some trouble for some of their Facebook pictures. I would imagine that this happens all the time.
Some of my old teachers have Facebook, so I'd imagine at least some of them pass along information like this. But, this sort of situation isn't anything new.
I sincerely doubt that any teachers are actively trolling through Facebook, looking for students to reprimand.
What's more likely is something like this: a handful of 'hip' teachers open up Facebook accounts and befriend students. Since there's social pressure to accept a person's friend request -- even if you don't really want to be his or her friend -- many students will wind up befriending their teachers.
Most of them will probably limit the teachers' photo privileges, but some less savvy students wont. And those less savvy students will also post incriminating pictures, implicating many, many other students.
Without actively looking for such material, it'll appear in the 'hip' teachers' news feeds. And what will they do? Punish! Punish!
Whether that's the right response or not is outside of my interests. But I really doubt that these teachers are spending their evenings dredging the depths of their students' picture troves.
vague pictures of people with beverages = conclusive proof of alcohol consumption? It's a jacked-up world you live in.
... of people looking at what individuals whom they are responsible for a portion of the day do during that time when I am not responsible for them. That would be like my boss firing me from my job because he heard from a coworker that he saw me shoplift a pack of gum at the kwik-e-mart last Saturday.
This just smacks of a control freak that wants to be able to dictate what others do 100% of the time, rather than that 20% or 40% of the time that they are actually responsible for them.
Reprimanding someone for what they do in their "personal time", their time away from your control, is just not right. There's no real difference between my shoplifting and my doing anything else. It doesn't have to be illegal or against anyone's rules but the controller. Maybe I bought a porno mag instead of shoplifting gum. What if he has a problem with that? Should he be allowed to fire me? That's just retarted.
No fun dealing with a boss on a power trip, and that's exactly what's going on here.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
You're right, the photo isn't proof (although it wouldn't surprise me if some people were dumb enough to take videos). That said, this could easily go further. Lets say you have these pictures that show 5 kids that seem to be drinking at a large party, and you can see 10 other students. You don't think that with just those pictures you could get at least one of the kids to admit what was going on there? Someone would, and the more kids involved the more likely it is.
I agree though. I've been trying to think of a way to prove under-age drinking with a photo, and I can't.
But even if no one admits it, that may be against the policy (the one for my high school said I couldn't even be at parties with alcohol, as I remember), and then you could just show it to the parents and let them take care of it however they want to.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
A large amount of states these days have very different drinking laws than what people think. Basically everyone knows you can't purchase alcohol under the age of 21 (some places minor purchase isn't illegal but possession is so purchase basically is). What a lot of people don't know is that possession and consumption laws with regards to alcohol and minors (or at least people under the age of 21) are a lot different. For possession a good number of states have family, parental, and/or private property/home/residence exceptions for minors. I'm pretty sure a decent majority have such exceptions for consumption.
Either way a school's right to punish for such activities is definitely immoral in my opinion. Saying it's ok for a school to suspend extracurricular activities (which build good character) could open the door to eventually suspending kids from school for something that is truly a parenting problem. And i'm of the belief that suspending kids from school (unless they're doing something disruptive/harmful to the learning environment) hurts the kid more than it helps.
Want to know the laws in your state? There's a lot of good information on the nih website
http://alcoholpolicy.niaaa.nih.gov/stateprofiles/index.asp
A lot (if not most) high schools have conduct codes that all student athletes/extra curricular participants must sign that states they will not do illegal activities. This is basically proof that they went back on that code and they are being punished for it.
-nick
This student shouldn't have any trouble getting into law school.
From TFA http://www.startribune.com/local/west/13549646.html
Natalie Friedman, a senior who is not part of any sports programs, said she was called in by her dean and scolded about Facebook photos of her behind a bar at a friend's house with drinks visible. She declined to say whether she was drinking, saying that no one can prove there was alcohol in the beverages.
Friedman said some of the photos obtained by school officials show students holding drinks at weddings and family vacations.
How about simply:
There, fixed that for you...
Cue in angry responses on how the laws are so incredibly repressive, there is no way for school children not to break them...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
this is outrageous! well.. then again, you should be punished for using Facebook.
I've lost any faith in the schools.
In my sophomore year of high school I was suspended for telling somebody how to open the command prompt. Now, remember, that goes on my permanent record. Not only was I banned from using the computer (which is pretty tough when I'm in C++, Cisco, and Webmaster classes) but it also ruined my chances of getting into certain schools.
I may sound bitter, and what I'm talking about may be considered entirely unrelated but the point I'm trying to get across is that schools look for every opportunity they can to catch kids doing something "bad". Shouldn't they be trying to catch kids doing something good?
The security administrator at my school would ride around the parking lot in a golf cart and check to see if student's cars were unlocked. If they were, he had no problem in allowing himself to search their car. I just could never understand how people stood for this.
These students being suspended for Facebook photos (not smart of them, but the reaction is over-the-top) could very well affect their future. IMO, it's time for people (high school students in this case) to start standing up.
I was in the Eden Prairie school system all the way through the middle of my Freshman year of High School...
My impression of the school district was always EXTREMELY positive until now. It was very well funded. We went on tons of field trips every year. The schools were all very nice. (The only thing I didn't like was EPHS switched to four double-length classes in a day the year I started there, and that really screwed me up when I moved away and went to another HS with traditional 7/8 classes in a day.)
I can only hope that this was one person's screw up and the district will fix its position.
While I am sure these kids probably were drinking, I can't believe that photos on the internet are considered proof of guilt. All it takes is a photo and some editing software, and you can post a picture of anyone doing anything. When I was in school, we weren't allowed to reference internet sources in our papers, and now school officials are using internet sources to punish kids. That doesn't seem right to me.
Probably delivered by a kid who got picked on by the popular alcohol chugging kids.
I was in the EP school system from Kindergarten until halfway through 9th Grade... and I recall it was pretty clique-ish and people were particularly nasty and cruel to other kids.
Most people might say it's the same in every high school, but I went to 3 high schools my freshman year (EPHS inclusive). And the high school in Connecticut and especially the high school in Arizona were a LOT nicer in terms of students' attitudes and treatment of other students.
Sounds like revenge!
"I'd just like to know what all those administrators are doing cruising Facebook pages looking at the students in their school."
/.
Obviously looking for students doing really dumb shit.
1st: You post something to a public sight, well it's pretty much public. Why even ask why group A is cruising group B's social networking sight? Simple answer: BECAUSE THEY CAN.
2nd: I have been at this computer 'thing' for 20 years now. I have never exposed my real identity to a public forums, EVER. I'm 35 now, so even when I was a teenager and had BBS and Internet access, I kept my shit private. Yes, I had Internet access in 88'.
3rd: These kids, like most of the kids I went to high school with, are morons.
Kids will always think they some how have a one up on the adult population. Problem with that is, there are adults that have been hard core computing longer than little Jeffery has been alive. How more than a hundred of them could do something basically so stupid is actually indicative of the education they have received from the school that is now punishing them. Can we at least pull the Dean/Guidance Councilors/Principal/Superintendent onto the carpet for being lax in their responsibility to teach these idiots some critical/analytical/objective mental skills?
Why is this stupid shit even news? Oh, I forget, it's
Were the kids rich or poor?
No one was given detention or suspended from school. The kids who signed a pledge were suspended from a number of games.
"The Minnesota State High School League requires student athletes to sign a pledge that they will not drink alcoholic beverages."
The others were "scolded".
What should a school do? Ignore a problem of kids drinking underage? Then someone would be saying sue the school for ignoring the problem. In most states extracurricular activities are a privilage not a right.
You know what if you aren't going to stick to the pledge then don't sign it then they have an argument. If you say, we'll you have to... if no one signs it they have no team and would cange their tune.
Underage drinking is a serious problem and is one of the biggest killers of teenagers.
I know it was a joke but some of you seem like its been too long since you were in school, nothing gets kept a secret long in high school a teacher hears of the crazy pics and so on. Or someone is pervin on some jailbait I guess. There were a few teachers like that at my school assigned seating with the hottest girls in the front row.
The old sports adage... "Keep your eye on the ball" applies here.
Schools are here to teach and educate our young ones. It appears they are losing sight of their purpose.
It seems that the schools are failing more often and getting further behind in their mission. It is as if this whole Facebook fiasco is an attempt to redirect the attention away from the schools main purpose.
The school admins need to get back to education purposes. If they continue to get further behind and continue to fail in educating our young ones then these very young ones will simply decide one day to stop attending. Perhaps the youngsters will set up their own schools and learn what they feel is important and relevant as opposed to the official schools. I sense that this will be the flow of things in the next 10 years. Self taught education.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
I'm from Eden Prairie.
"I'd just like to know what all those administrators are doing cruising Facebook pages looking at the students in their school."
Short answer: They weren't.
An anonymous person stopped by the high school and dropped off a CD containing the images saved off numerous Facebook sites.
Links as well, I believe, but am not sure. Of course speculation is that it was some kid who wasn't invited; I rather speculate it was a parent who was sick of the hypocrisy of the rules never being enforced, and dropped it off to confront the administration and FORCE them to act.
And for the Europeans who feel our 'policies on alcohol are bizarre': let's remember - to participate in student athletics in Minnesota, EVERY student must sign a pledge to entirely abstain from alcohol or tobacco as a student athlete, and (as I recall, it was 20 years ago I was in EPHS) even to avoid being PRESENT at such activities. Say what you want about the motivation behind the rule, the simple fact is that every one of them signed such a promise and are now blatantly proved to be breaking it. Busted.
My cynical view is that I would like to know WHEN this CD was dropped off. EP is a perennial powerhouse dominant in the local football league...coincidentally football season *just* ended 6 weeks ago. So no real penalties nor damage to the football team.
-Styopa
...I'm in shock how many of the replies to this topic lack the basic knowledge that YOU CAN'T PROVE THAT UNDERAGE DRINKING IS TAKING PLACE WITH PHOTOGRAPHS, how the hell can you prove what's in the containers to begin with?
I'm sure even the cops are going "wow these parents are stupid for letting schools get away with this nonsense"
This is abuse of power by the school system.
It is the job of law enforcement to do this, not the school...what these kids do on their own time IS NONE OF THE SCHOOLS BUSINESS and this is further compounded if it is a state school as oppose to a private one.
When are parents going to GROW SOME FUCKING BALLS and start being responsible for their spawn!?
I can understand if the kids were in uniform performing these acts - then the school might have an issue. The fact that they are out of school hours, doing what young kids do, the idea of suspending them is absurd. Saving them a criminal record? Is world news any worse? I went out a few years ago and purchased a second hand uniform of my old school. Mind you it didnt fit too well. Drank a few too many, then busked inside with a "Freestyle Rap Collective" with a few friends doing the same. It got back to the school apparently - and to this day.. I wonder if they ever caught "Easy Fizzle" and the "Chrome Collective". *shrug*
This doesn't even BEGIN to cover additional layers of deception and intrigue that open up. What about framing someone you want to hurt by taking some clean pictures of someone you hate, photoshopping in some alcoholic beverages? Create a new myspace or facebook with the said doctored photos of the person you're framing, whip up an accurate-enough profile of the real life person, and wait. Or go ahead and anonymously tip off the administrators to the new page you created. The owner doesn't even know about their doppelganger until it's too late!
... well... I mean it is but those drinks weren't really there!"
"Well student Jones, I have hear some _picture evidence_ with *gasp* Alcohol in them. Enjoy your suspension from the football team and the corresponding loss of scholarships and college degrees and a good life."
"But... that isn't even my Facebook page! That isn't me in those pictures... I
Are the school principals technical enough to do digital image forensics? Is there even an appeals process? If you were falsely accused, would you have ANY way to clear your name? Is there even a "trial" or do they simply hit Print and go directly to the sentencing, life-ruining judgements against these kids?
I'll grant none of the kids involved this time claimed they were falsely accused, but it would be SO easy for tech-savvy geeks to frame up their enemies.
If you visit this site
http://wcco.com/local/facebook.drinking.pictures.2.626080.html
The pictures were left anonymously at the administration office. Either by a student or a parent of a student more than likely. I went to this high school and the admin has more than enough things on their plates than to surf Facebook looking for underage drinking.
The students who were suspended from sporting events because they made a commitment to the Minnesota State High School League stating they would not smoke, drink, or use drugs. They did not honor that, so they're being punished.
Two things to consider from first hand knowledge:
1) Don't think for a minute that school administrators and school resource officers (the cops that roam the hallways) do not have accounts on facebook, myspace, etc and pose and interact with students looking to entrap them.
2) People need to familiarize themselves with the Safe-Schools Act...it make the Patriot Act at times seem tame. Basically ANYTHING involving a student of said school can now be deemed a school matter no matter time nor place all in the name of school safety.
The school gives no comment to the article - so we can't possibly know the original instigator of the investigation/disciplinary actions.
It is rather more likely that a parent looked over their teen's shoulder and had a fit to see that other kids at the school was leading their innocent babe (read: depraved little drunkard IIRC my schooldays correctly) astray and made a complaint to the principal/board.
The school must at that point act - their reputation is dependent not only upon results of exams etc. but also on the community's perception of the kinds of citizens they are producing. If the community feels that the school is producing students who binge drink, the school gets less support. The board gets voted out, the management gets fired etc.
And yet a lot of the discussion is about "why did the admins spend their time crawling facebook?", which is neither factually established (except as a throwaway line by the OP) nor relevant to what I see as the real issue - which is the process by which young people are learning to protect their privacy in the online social networking context. To me they didn't, and they are facing the consequences. I'd like to propose a school curriculum that has as part of its programme positive sessions on online discretion, and I would expect such sessions to go far beyond the now hackneyed don't-give-your-name-out-to-pedophiles line.
Why are government officials (school administrators) allowed to punish citizens without due process? Who gave these officials jurisdiction over these young citizens activities when they were not in school? It would be one thing for the school to take action based on the conviction of the students by a court of law where due process is observed. There would actually be a finding of guilt. In this case, there is no finding of guilt, hence we have to assume the kids are innocent. When I was in high school, it was legal for me to drink in the next state over (drinking age: 18). I actually had a teacher say that I could be suspended for the perfectly legal activity of drinking in the other state! Some things never change.
"athletes sign a pledge saying they will not drink alcohol."
do they have any choice not to sign the pledge?
can you hold a teen legally accountable for any other contract?
why make liars of your children by duping them into unrealistic promises?
it is irresponsible of adults to push children or teenagers to make these kinds of pledges and it sets a terribly low standard for society in general. any non-conformist who refuses to sign such a pledge will be the nail to be hammered down and made an example of.
this kind of behaviour sickens me.
however the teens were still foolish for posting the pictures publically and
I'd like to think a bullied geek took revenge on the popular but dumb jocks.
I was about to post that "probably blah blah blah (read parent)" but here it is confirmed. I can't imagine a school administrator going looking for trouble in this way. This is getting attention on slashdot, and it's just the kind of thing that's going to be discussed at PTA meetings and faculty meetings and teacher union meetings. I was at a union representative assembly a few weeks ago, and our lawyer was up there cautioning us not to play WOW with our students because of the real money transactions that sometimes take place. For some folks not familiar with technology AT ALL, the whole computer thing looks like a minefield. What school administration or district administration wants this notoriety?
As an aside, there's a 19-yr old man running for our school board, and that's just the demographic for Facebook. He says he wants increased security and a class on world religions, but I suspect (from other things I've read) that he is using it as cover for teaching Christianity in schools. Depending on how this guy viewed his high school years he might be predisposed against this type of activity by minors. If he gets elected. He's not running unopposed, but that's not unheard of.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
/ fark you
One of these days the US will catch up with the rest of the world and realize that arbitrary drinking-age laws are stupid.
How dumb do you have to be?!?
When we were in high-school we were doing the same thing. But, we were smart enough not to post pictures of ourselves breaking the law on the Internet. I feel no sympathy whatsoever for people who do this. These kids need to have their heads examined. Why would you post pictures like this on the Internet!?!?!
What a bunch of MORONS.
Heck - i'd expel them for something that dumb.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Parents don't choose where to send their kids to school 98% of the time; public schools have a monopoly. The "we're protecting our school's reputation in order to save funding" argument is so transparently ridiculous that even the school admins didn't attempt it.
This raises a very important point. I read TFA and nowhere did the article mention whether the school in question is a public or private school. If it is indeed a private school, there is no issue. Private schools have the right to admit or deny anyone so long as no federal anti-discrimination laws are violated. Many private schools have morals clauses by which they prohibit certain activities outside of school on the penalty of expulsion. The reputation argument is a perfectly valid one in the context of a private school.
If we were to extend that line of reasoning to public schools, then public schools could conceivably discipline their students for writing a letter to the editor of the local newspaper complaining about the quality of the food in the school cafeteria, for instance. Clearly this would be a violation of the student's First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
At issue here is the First Amendment right to freedom of assembly. Can you be punished at school for attending a non-school party where some possibly illegal activity is taking place? Again the article is light on details. The article mentions that some students were athletes participating in extra-curricular activities for which they had to sign a no drinking pledge. The article doesn't say whether the disciplined students were limited to those athletes. What standard of evidence, if any, did school officials use to determine which students were engaging in illegal activity? Were students punished for having a bottle in their hand or just being at the party? Where did the party take place? Again, the article omits too many important details to make a real judgment here.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Somebody is going to be getting a swirley for that.
Or killed.
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
The kids were stupid. If they mailed in pictures to the newspaper of them doing the same things, there would be the same punishment.
:-)
Don't be stupid.
And get off my lawn.
Yes, its about power, which in this case was exercised properly.
As of the students concerned said:
After her meeting with her dean, Friedman said, "I see his perspective. They can't look at these pictures and not do anything about it.
One the one hand society wants its kids _raised_ properly and on the other, it wants to take away the means to do so. Foolish!
All of these Social Networking sites should put up a "gate" page where the visitor has to check a box stating that they are not affiliated with an educational institution and waive their right/ability to enforce the policies of their institutions, or the policies of other institutions.
"I state that I am not an employee of, or affilitated with an employee of any educational institution. I understand that any information acessed through (name of website) may not be used for the enforcement of any school/company/business/department/city law/code/policy/statute and I agree not to inform any school/company/business/department/city employee or affilliate of any information/data/statements contained within this site. I also agree/understand that this information is not to be used/acessed/copid/reproduced or utilized in any way in policy/code/conduct/disciplinary enforcement proceedings/actions against or for any persons photographed/mentioned/described in information/data/statements containd/stored within this site."
It's really not that hard. I'm suprised that nobody has done it yet. Not only that, it would be a massive boost for a social networking site that does something like this. Schools would hate it, since they waived their authority and agreed not to discipline anybody they found violating their "ethics" on the site.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
On a night when the big news was a gasoline truck that rolled into the ditch, this story was a no-show on the local ten o'clock news.
Nothing to see here. Not even the locals care.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
I very much doubt the joyless administrators can even comprehend the irony of their actions.
It surprises me how in this day and age the "young tech savvy" kids make the SAME DUMB ASS MISTAKE! I consider myself and old-head (37) and I remember when the internet was in its infancy how it was the norm to consider ALL information on the internet PUBLIC because once you put it out there you can expect ANYONE to get to it. These so-called Tech Savvy kids post things on the internet and then mark it "private" thinking that only their "friends" will see it...STUPID!
1) ANY computer seeing the photos from the web keeps a cache. This means that the photo is ON THE COMPUTER VIEWING IT. So if Billy's mom or dad gets on the computer after he views the photo they can see your dumb ass without even going to Facebook/Myspace/whatever.
2) Sites get hacked all the time. Expect it.
3) The photo was at least on 2 other devices before being posted to the site...the camera taking the photo, and the computer that uploaded it. If your friend took the picture, are you sure they deleted it after posting?
The philosophy is simple...Do NOT put anything on the internet that you wold not want anyone to see...PERIOD!
Now, GET OFF MY LAWN!
I used to drink beer out of a Mountain Dew bottle in a paper bag at lunch. Then they banned soda, so it was Black Russians or Kaluha and Creme in a chocolate milk bottle. Until senior year, when I switched to vodka in a water bottle.
OK, not really. The smartest person in this sordid story is the senior who refused to admit to anything and noted that they couldn't prove there was alcohol in the drinks. Sure, she's not telling the whole truth, but even if she outright lied it wouldn't be ethically wrong under the circumstances, IMO -- the administration can be considered to be the enemy.
That's not proof. I know it's unlikely, but unlikely is not how the law works.
The burden of proof in a misdemeanor case for underage drinking is beyond a reasonable doubt. If you saw a photo with a room full of people drinking out of cans and bottles clearly labeled as containing alcohol, in what appeared to be a party setting, what would you think? I think it would take an effort of willful blindness to buy the notion that they weren't drinking alcoholic beverages.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Domers, what can you do?
My school burned down. Go Braves!
i find it curious how many people reply as if breaking the law is 'wrong' a priori.
it seems to me that underage drinking can be stupid, but it's not wrong in and of itself. someone can do wrong while intoxicated, but it isn't the drinking that causes it. it's bad judgement. punishing kids for imitating the socially acceptable partying habits of people ~5-6 years their senior seems pretty hypcritical.
if the kids drove cars around, that's another story. but the 'wrong' would be having driven while intoxicated which actually endangers others' lives. but photos of kids being stupid to impress their friends?
laws obeyed for the sake of obeying a law doesn't reveal anything about the moral maturity or ethical reasoning of a person. in fact, it reveals that one is a moral midget who follows rules for their own sake.
kids do stupid things; adults do stupid things. hopefully we learn from them. when that stupid thing trespasses another's wishes it becomes a moral issue.
How about copyright extensions? DMCA? Microsoft anti-trust violations?
They are legal, enforceable and well plain dumb. Its high school, get over it.
Don't put photos of yourself on line that depict you being stupid, dont add people as friends unless you want them to see everything.
Move along kids, get used to the real world while you are at it.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
You don't think that with just those pictures you could get at least one of the kids to admit what was going on there?
So what if you do? You now have a couple kids claiming that drinking happened. Not really a standard of evidence I'd feel good about.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
In bar/restaurants you can freely drink from 18, between 16 and 18 you are allowed some type of drink if accompanied (I think liquor are not allowed, but beer is). Everything being forbidden under 16. But those are the law for PUBLIC consumption. I am not sure that for private consumption there are law at all.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Let's say I recently went out one weekend, got drunk, got into a fight, damaged private property, and then was finally caught by the police in a DUI sting.
There were pictures on the news, and I even put them on my FACEBOOK, and MYSPACE site. Does my supervisor at work have the right to discipline me and/or fire me? The answer is no. If they did do anything, it would be grounds for a lawsuit.
So why are kids any different? Kids have no rights, expressly given or implied. It's an absolute . Anything a kid does, anywhere, can be punished by those in authority.
In some cultures, it really does take a village to raise a child. So a school punishing a kid for anything they can prove or suspect, is no different then what has happened to kids since the very beginning.
In this country parents push the responsibility to raise their kids off to practically anybody else anyways.
How is this new? Or even news?
if they want to drink, they will whether I want them to or not.
Only if you suck as a parent. I didn't drink at all until I was 19, and not more than a couple times until I was 20 and living in Europe, because I knew my parents would have my ass if I got busted.
And that's not because I didn't have the opportunity - I spent high school around people who drank and did various drugs. I just personally declined.
So yeah, if you let your kids know that you don't think you can stop them from doing anything, you're right, they'll probably drink, smoke crack, whatever. But if you treat your kids like they are kids instead of like you want them to be your best friend, there's no reason you can't teach them that maybe drinking is something best done later, since you'll kick their ass if they don't believe you.
paintball
And the administrator was bust looking at pictures of the students (sounds rather dodgy to me), with the "excuse" that they're looking out for the kids. Further, why don't the kids have their profiles / photo's private, and surely the school has the responsibility of blocking websites that kids shouldn't have access to in the first place? I remember when I was in high school, heck, even in varsity (not to mention the work place) that all kinds of websites were blocked (no, not just p0rn lol).
Supposedly the pics were delivered on a CD (maybe a DVD) to school administrators. The person who delivered it is either unknown or not being identified. (disclosure/source: My sister-in-law attends EPHS. I'm anonymous for her sake.)
Should they treat this any differently from regular "postal spam"? It's very easy for photographs to be faked and can require considerable forensic examination to identify if this is the case or not.
To all of you who think giving up you rights to privacy in order to 'thwart terrorism' 'improve tax collection' 'improve targeted advertising' or whatever the bureaucrats want - well here is a great example of why that isn't a great idea.
People do stuff in their private lives that if made public would get them in trouble. One assumes that all these alcohol swilling students are not raving criminals about to murder their neighbours though they will now be treated as such.
It is perhaps understandable that because the US is pretty lively place, that schools will have alcohol bans for aspiring athletes. But what we see as sensible discipline for young people could equally be seen as Soviet style state repression for adults.
The loss of privacy that we face in future will mean that every single rule infringement you ever make will be recorded and used against you by the institutions you interact with. So that means the perfectly well behaved will get medical treatment, work, marriage, loans; the less than perfect will not.
Looking on the bright side of things though, it does mean that you wont have to wait for the afterlife to discover whether you are going to Heaven or Hell. On the other hand it isn't God who is going to be making the decision about where you are going.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
The fact that another student brought the incident to the attention of school administrators was the beginning of the mess for these kids seems to have missed the reading of a lot of readers on slash-dot. In fact the first thing assumed by many (not all) of the readers here is that there is a bunch of psychopathic morons working in a school, focused on kiddie porn, and trolling websites for victims. Man you people need to get a life and understand that the news media has tipped your bias pointer off-scale; and learn that not everyone in the world is a sexual deviant.
I live here in MN, and well familiar with Eden Prairie high school.
I am in agreement that there should be repercussions to these students by the school because it demonstrates a larger social issue with regard to how the school is teaching these students. But on the same tone, it demonstrates very well what happens when; over time, you slowly erode morals and ethics in society and in particular, the public school system, and the outcome with these kids as they grow up with that environment.
I have successfully gotten one of my 3 kids out the door as a young adult, and did not have to worry about teenage pregnancy, drinking and all the drug problems that many of these kids have. I fully expect to have my other two out the door in much the same fashion. Unfortunately there are a lot of households where this is not the case and these problems will continue to abound.
I'm not going to say that I'm better than anyone on here but lets face it, some folks do need to think a short while before you hit the reply link. Lets not assume the worst about everyone on the planet. Get some facts first.
There really are a lot of good people in the world.
And; there is something to be said about the first person who responds to this comment, and balks at all that I have said here! And that would demonstrate why these problems are here in the first place.
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
I graduated from high school in midterm of 1972. I'm more pissed off than ever about this kind of bullshit now that I help pay for it. "God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board." Mark Twain
Tech Public Policy stuff
And; there is something to be said about the first person who responds to this comment, and balks at all that I have said here! And that would demonstrate why these problems are here in the first place.
Well there is something immoral about YOU to be said when you're presupposing that there's something wrong with someone who disagrees with your post before they even post their disagreement!. Are you sure you want to take the moral high ground?
Do you raise your kids with the same attitude. "Well here's my opinion, and if anyone balks at anything I've said, no matter what their reason, it demonstrates why society sucks"?
Let's hope your kids are more open minded than you are, and if they're like most kids with parents like you they've probably just learned to hide their drinking and drugtaking a lot better. It would certainly be easy with a parent who's already made their mind up and sticks their fingers in their ears to avoid hearing what they may not want to hear.
That's an interesting point - what would happen if a Jewish kid at the school posted pictures of themselves at passover, sharing a glass of wine (as is traditional)...?
I'd like to see the school try and suspend them for that.
The US has a very unhealthy attitude towards drinking - how can someone be trusted to vote, but not allowed to drink?
but I'd bet he left out one word -- illegal. It likely requires that a student can't knowingly be in a room with people who are illegally consuming alcohol [under 21], or illegally consuming tobacco [under 18]. Since some high school students turn 18, it might also ban being in the same room with any high school student consuming tobacco products. Kids can still go to major league sporting events and sit with 30,000 people drinking beer at the same time. They can't have a beer, and they can't sit net to their classmate having a beer.
Grandma's spaghetti gets a pass, as does communion. The toast at New Year? Nope. Get cider or something. I'd hope you'd expect your child to honor the promise of not consuming alcohol.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Well, after reading through the article and most of the comments... I am kind of on the fence as to whether or not this is a violation of "privacy" which as we all know, as well educated geeks, is not guaranteed. (I am sure someone will flamebait me for that). However, I did notice one thing in the article. Apparently, the school administrators also used photos of students on vacation and at family weddings, as well. Now, this might be an issue for me. What if the family was on vacation simply to Canada and the student was 18? legal there. Or to europe? They can drink there too. Does the school's jurisdiction supercede that of the parents? If the parents gave their son/daughter a glass of wine, beer, whatever... Then the school has no right to comment, I believe. For those photos of those students, do we know if beer is really in that can? Are all those student's parents behind the camera making sure they do not party "too hard?" Because if each parent was there, that would be OK, no? Anyway, my opinion has little influence on most people on this subject. The school should stick to its OWN jurisdiction, and not troll the internet looking for things on their students. And this my friends, is why the constitution needs to be ammended, or each state needs to enact privacy guarantees. ::shrugs:: my 2 cents. (Even if they aren't copper anymore... )
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
Doesn't mean it should be arbitrarily and capriciously violated. Many things in our society are not rights they are part of the social contract. We act, in our societies as if that social contract means something, is important. If not, then what you have literally is fascism. A society organized according to exactly and only what the letter of the law says.
Well I tell you, the law doesn't say I have to help you when you get hit by a car in the street either, so good luck with that.
I hope it wasn't couched in those terms. I've been down this road in another context. At least in my state, it is illegal to coerce someone in that way. You can't tell someone "Do what I want or I'll turn you in to the police." If someone has done something illegal, you can report it or not report it at your option for most crimes. (There are some mandatory reporting exceptions.) But you can't blackmail someone with the threat of doing so.
I hope they said "We have decided to punish you for breaking the rules. We have decided not to turn these photos over to the police. Those two decisions have nothing to do with each other." That would be legal and reasonable.
IANAL, etc., of course.
You know, if a school is too much of a pain, the students should just organize a school strike :) send a signed/chain msg via facebook & myspace, where all the students agree not to attend school until the school apologizes. Ever heard of worker unions? :P
I hate the way teachers, principals, and other school staff think they have some sort of superiority in day to day life.
It reminds me of one time. I was in a Best Buy, and there was this extremely attractive 18yr old Sales girl (OK because I'm 19 :P). So we'd smiled at each other once or twice, and we ended up chatting, as she stood waiting to sell cameras. I was sort of buying cameras myself, and after hanging out with her for about an hour (and she was flirting a lot... it's not like she didn't like me) I started messing around photographing her on a camera I was looking at. She's laughing and stuff. Anyhow she goes away for a second, and ends up coming back talking with this other dude. Looked about 30 yrs old, but he could have been as young as early 20s. She didn't look like she liked him much. So he wanders back over with her. She makes eye contact for a second, and I pointed the camera I was holding back over to her for a moment. She laughs. Next thing you know, he is interrogating her about me. "How long have you known this guy?" "Really...?" "That's a bit weird isn't it? [re: what I was doing]" "That must suck. Well I'm sure you must get that a lot, how beautiful you are." So I'm thinking "Oh damn. Been hitting on a girl, and now she's brought her boyfriend over." (he came back with her after she disappeared for a second saying she was going to the restroom). Well, since I was assuming it was her boyfriend, I shut up. He keeps talking to her for like 45 minutes, and I stay there, 1. because I hadn't said bye to her, nor got her number, 2. I didn't have a good feeling about this dude. Anyhow, right at the end of the conversation, she says "so how did you find me?" and he says "oh, I was just looking up my old students on Facebook and I found you work here so I went to meet you"... 30 something year old freaky High School teacher looking up OLD hot girl students (from 10th grade) on Facebook, finding their workplace, talking to them for an hour while dissing a guy she likes. It was a good thing (for his sake) that he disappeared before I registered what he was saying.
Around here, most schools have written codes of conduct the explicitly state what types of actions will cause a student to be banned from extra curricular activities as well as actions that will result in suspension/expulsion. Everyone is supposed to read and sign one copy.. students participating in extra curricular activities a second copy or a more detailed version.
At least the school district my kids attended the behavior and punishments were explicitly laid out and followed as written.
So even if it wasn't school related and the school district found out about it.. you received the the punishment you had previously agreed to,, even if you were already being punished by the local legal establishment.
Lesson: Read and understand before you sign documents as someone, somewhere will hold you to it....
Sure beats shooting up the place.
There have been a number of good comments here on this story. I just wanted to add my 2 cents.
From what I understand, the high school received a CD with Facebook photos on it which depicted students partying. The students that we reprimanded were members of the High School sports teams who had signed an agreement to not drink alcohol and to avoid situations where alcohol was being consumed. I believe that the school was within their rights to act as they did with some exceptions.
Those exceptions includes students who had pictures of them around alcohol at weddings or family events. These are private affairs where the parents are responsible for the actions of their children and which should be excluded from both the agreement and punnishment. I'm not saying that all parents are good parents and that all teens behave at weddings and family events. However, these are different situations than a party environment where no parents are present. However, I have a feeling that these kids will be lumped in with the rest given the state of Zero Tollerence (we're too dumb to figure out the appropriate punnishment for each situation so we are going to abdicate any attempt at thinking and just meet out punnishment based on the rules, wether they are fair or not) in the schools today.
I am firmly against schools actively seeking out this information. However, if it is dropped in their laps (as in this case) then they should act on it.
you joke, but... these days professionalism in schools is so low that teachers dating students is pretty common. It happened at my school, and at the school's of most people I've talked to.
What's more, these people rarely get fired since union rules for firing make it next to impossible to fire a teacher for any reason whatsoever.
I've said this several times before and I'll repeat it now, many of the people who go for school administration or teaching jobs are sadistic fascists who derive pleasure from the fact that they have the power to wield discipline over helpless youth in a mostly closed world.
I can just see the principal's eyes lighting up upon receiving this information. The quickening of his/her pulse as he relished the thought of dishing out the punishment. Oh, the fantasies as he/she worked out what to say to each student. Finally, the near-orgasms as they sat the student down, showed them the incriminating photos, said things like "you're in trouble", holding the punishment over their heads, then assuming the interrogator role - extracting further information to be used against other students, before finally handing out the judgement and discipline.
Oh, the power! That was a happy school administration that week. They went home in a good mood, they were chipper, there was a lightness in their step. Rarely do they get to punish so many kids at once. For that one week these little mental midgets, significantly more immature than the students they teach, felt big.
The instinct to punish is great among them. We entrust our children to people the likes of which would easily create more Abu Ghraib's or Guantamos. If they had their way there would be waterboarding and electric shocks, not to mention nudity. Time was when they could do the nudity as they paddled the manifold exposed bottoms...
Heck, my physics department has a student run pub in the basement and one of my lecturers even gave the students some time to advertise it.
Oh yeah? I'm studying nuclear physics here in Stockholm, and one of our department heads has an office lined with dozens of empty vodka bottles from all over Eastern Europe on his top shelves.
Right now he's working on getting the school a new research reactor, and I hope to God that he hides them before anybody from the IAEA stops by for a chat.
I also work for a school district and we have had an increasing amount of postings online, this has been one of the more interesting gray areas. We have seen the parties, read the Myspace pages with really little we can do. I have talked to the legal department before and they basically say that we can not penalize the student's actions based on what they do outside of school. For example we had an incident that a video made it on YouTube of, well lets just say it was something you wouldn't want your mother to see, done inside the school. We were able to reprimand that student because it was on school property and get it removed (by the user). Students acting outside of school is a completely different story. Parties and activities off-premises is a no go. We can't use Jane Doe's Myspace page as a reason to check her even though she posted a bullion about what she sells at school. I mean it could keep an eye on her more but that is really the extent. Of coarse this really hasn't been tested so policies have not but put into place. if there is an actual threat put on the internet in any of the social networks any school district would take immediate action but is it right to do so? Oh and on a side note, for everyone saying why are we reading myspace pages etc... its the same way students hunt down our myspace pages and look us up on face book. It is usually for just curiosity to learn about students. 99% of the time they are doing exactly what high school students do, but you will find poety and thoughts that are really insightful that you would never see in the schools.
The sad thing is that this is another example of the growing trend of parents not doing their jobs and schools having to step in (rightly or wrongly). Talk to any grey-haired teacher about how it used to be and how it is now... and you'll see the stress in their eyes. Kids don't respect teachers if they know that parents will always take the kid's side. "why did you fail my kid!?!" is always their first question, not "how can we help my child learn this better?".
Extrapolate this to the underage alcohol and drug problems, and you probably are having mixed feelings from the teachers. The want to help look out for the kids AND they want to curb bad behaviour that extends to schools.
I'm just saying, I can see why the administration would have done it.
The kids deserve to be punished for breaking the law; however, it was also an invasion of privacy to those who *weren't* breaking the law. Both parties deserve punishment.
Also, I believe there is legal precedent here. If I remember correctly, one school got sued for this exact same sort of thing -- and lost.
If these kids can learn while still teenagers that their actions have consequences, then a scholarship was much more valuable to them as a punishment.
What I'm trying to say is that this punishment probably fit the crime so well that it wasn't a punishment at all, but a natural consequence of stupid, illegal behavior. Some people never learn this. Some people get nice scholarships and still never learn this lesson.
**Note that I am not saying the school did or didn't take away the scholarship, just that I don't think they have that power. The GP definitely didn't say the school took them away, only that they were lost.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
They don't have to prove the alternative DID happen. It's sufficient that it COULD happen.
Damn, I hope you're not ever on my jury!
First off, people need a reality check. Facebook is public. If people want certain behaviours, lifestyles, and/or activities to remain private they should not put them on publicly accessible websites. NOBODY is doing any good by shifting blame to some mysterious person, administration, or validity of the schools actions. What people are missing here seems to me to be the fact that we are not using this as an opportunity to teach people to act responsibly with their personal information. We seem to be constantly pointing fingers and taking tempertantrums when these sorts of things happen instead of taking responsibility for our irresponsible actions. This is the most important issue hear. People will get over their little slaps on the hand. However, if people get away without understanding that these things came to pass due to their own irresponsible actions it is all for not. It is behaviour such as this that is goin to make security professionals such as myself worth 10x our weight in gold over the next decade. GROW UP. ACT RESPONSIBLY. TEACH YOUR CHILDREN TO DO THE SAME.
Interesting, but I'm not sure how much trust I would place in a photograph in this age of photoshop especially if they were being delivered by someone who could be an adversary. Then again, I'm not skilled in the use of photo editing programs so maybe more is involved to commit some type of fraud through photographs than I might naively imagine (and I suppose there are likely easier ways of doing it).
This is a rant, be warned... Everyone who has commented that the school overstepped its boundaries here is completely missing the point. First of all, I played varsity football for three years at a public high school in upstate NY (I can feel the -1 troll coming already). I too was forced to sign a code of conduct, just like every other varsity athlete at our school, stating that I would abstain from drug and alcohol use (among other things, including maintaining grades, not cutting classes, not getting into disciplinary problems, etc.). This code was instituted because as student athletes, we were expected to be students and citizens of the community first, athletes second, and yes, perhaps even role models for younger students (gasp!). Just like we condemn pro athletes for making mistakes costing them millions of dollars, kick college athletes off of teams resulting in lost scholarships (and potentially lots of lost dollars), so too should high school athletes be held to a higher standard than the average student. "Eden Prairie High School administrators have reprimanded more than 100 students and suspended some from sports and other extracurricular activities after obtaining Facebook photos of students partying, several students said Tuesday." Emphasis here on suspended from sports and other extracurricular activities, with less emphasis on the Facebook angle of the article (I know its /. here, but try to keep an open mind). I was always taught that playing sports (or being in a band, science club, computer club, etc.) was a privelage, not an entitlement. For instance, the school in no way owed its students the right to participate in these sports and extracurricular activities, they could have dropped the programs at any time and for many reasons.
Many parents and members of faculty quite often protest the amount of money being pumped into athletics as being too great. They make the argument that those monies could be much better spent elsewhere on more "pertinent" school items (I would disagree and say that student athletics is a vital part to any successful high school / college). My point here is that every day is a try out / job interview / spotlight shined on you / etc. for student athletes. You have to act appropriately despite having a lot more pressure than the average 16 year old at your school. You have to be smarter.
At my school, if you missed more than 1 day of school in a week when you had a game, guess what, you were not eligible to play in the game that week. If your grades were slipping, teachers would report you to the administration, and guess what, you wouldn't play until your grades were adequate (You had to maintain above a C average week in and week out and not be failing any one subject). If you were given any measure of disciplinary punishment (detention, suspension, etc.) guess what, you wouldn't play that week. I know this doesn't seem like that great of a burden, but at a public high school of 2000+ students you'd be surprised. No other students were held to such lofty expectations, nor in my opinion, should they have been.
Here's a personal example. Several members of my team senior year were suspended from our home coming game because an angry parent (of a student who had rode the bench all year thinking his son should have been the starter mind you) alerted administration that several of the starters had attended a party nights before the game. The guys were suspended for the rest of the year (3 games total) without any appeal, without being allowed to refute the claims. No facebook photos were required to suspend these kids, only a phone call from a parent and corroboration by a few other students who were trying to avoid their own parental involvment.
My teammates didn't claim "they weren't drinking." The rules were strict, but the rules were simple. My teammates broke them. They got caught and knew it. They were done. End of story. We all knew the rules, the majority of us stuck to them. Some people just thought that they wouldn't get
This is the sort of info that should be taught to everyone. The reason the environment it getting creamed is due to corporate greed and industrial pollution that has been in effect for over 90 years!
A book on the real reasons for the banning of Marijuana, other drugs, Prohibition and a whole host of laws "for the public good" that are really their to profit certain people and groups.
Pure genius tho, hi-jacking religious and/or conservative sympathies for profit...oh...wait...
When I was in college, the incidents of rape and theft were increasing in the dorms, and the RAs would enter the apartment style suites without the concent of the people living there. This violated the lease. When I began to complain, the administration was given an anonymous envelope with pictures of me drinking in the dorms from 4 years prior. When they talked about potential suspension, I addressed that the pictures were mine, and because of that, I own the copyright to them. According to the facebook terms of use, images may not be copied, displayed, reproduced, printed.... etc without the copyright owners concent. They dropped the idea of suspension pretty quickly.
First of all, let me say "here, here", to causality's comment about how you can't legislate morality.
But what occurs to me is, what's the non-online/pre-internet version of this story? I understand that these were pictures delivered to the school administration anonymously by somebody, presumably someone who wasn't their friend.
Imagine if some unknown person followed a group of high school students around (or hired a private investigator to do the same) and took pictures of them engaged in questionable activities? (Assume for the sake of this discussion that all these activities happened in public spaces, therefore no "expectation of privacy" on the part of students)
Would that be OK?
It seems like a lot of people have no problem with the school administration taking disciplinary action against students for activities they engage in outside of school hours off of school property. To those people I say, what if the school had hired private detectives to follow students around, and, say, got pictures of them in a bar consuming alcohol? Would that be ok, or would it be more like a police state?
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Whether you personally voted for a rule has essentially no bearing on whether it applies to you.They don't have to, but that doesn't make the consequences of their actions go away.You've got a pretty weird definition of free will.
The students wanted to be on a sports team.
The school said they had to sign a document to be on the team.
The students chose to sign that document.
Just because that was the only way they could do something they wanted doesn't make it "against their will". That's as stupid as saying a nightclub is taking my money "against my will" if I choose to go there, or that MacDonald's is taking my money "against my will" if I want a Big Mac.
The school didn't hold a gun to any kid's head to force them to join a team. Joining - and signing - was voluntary. Playing high school football ain't a right, no matter how important some people think it is.
They are teaching the children that their actions have consequences. I don't understand how teaching them the power of their actions could mess up a poor child's future. The idea that I have some measure of control over my destiny, for good or ill, has been one of the best things I've ever learned.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
Yes, the drinking age is a miserable 21. IMHO, a lot more kids drink irresponsibly just because it's illegal and frowned down upon.
The students should have been smart enough to restrict their photos so only people marked as friends could view them. But I don't know how this works with minifeeds.
Given the explosion of facebook outside of students, I think it would be a good move for Facebook to require users to register as a specific type, i.e. administrator, student, teacher, etc. and allow restriction of profile views by type.
As to the administrators, however, there has to be a line drawn between what the school concerns themselves with and what isn't any of their business. Sure, privacy isn't really at stake (they posted it on the 'net) but why is this the school's business? If the act didn't occur on school grounds, and the students didn't post the photos from school computers (that seems like the big issue) it seems like an issue for parents or local law enforcement. I don't see how schools could issue suspensions or detentions for something that didn't happen on school premises (though I'm 20, and I remember it happening quite often).