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.

Comments

Re:My wife is a high school teacher...

[haibijon]

This is at least one of the problems with the American school system. Apparently teachers care more about their students' personal lives, and less about their education.

Re:Your rights do not apply at School

[c6gunner]

If it were me, I'd call the ACLU. I'm pretty sure they'd send a few lawyers down to help the affected students. Go ahead and call them. Make sure you record the call, though, so we can all laugh at them telling you to get lost.

No matter how much you may like to think otherwise, neither the world nor the legal code spin around your personal opinions. I would absolutely LOVE to see you explain which laws this policy violates.

Go ahead. I'll be right here.

Re:Don't they have anything better to do?

[Chemicalscum]

It's the latter (with a more reasonable limit of 18 (and 16 for beer and wine)) over here in germany, and if parents hand their 10 year old a beer or wine, or even some hard stuff, that's not considered a problem. Yes but modern Germany is a reasonably civilized country. Here we are talking about the U.S. the Land of the Unfree home of the Christian Taleban.

Re:Kosher

[smooth wombat]

by having the drinking age higher, not the driving age.

To get a drivers license, one has to pass one or more tests which (supposedly) will demonstrate your grasp of how to operate a vehicle safely.

Personally, if someone wants to get drunk, get alcohol poisoning, run in traffic while drunk, dangle your girlfriend out a window, or do other stupid things, that's your business. I just don't want to hear what a good person Johnny or Susie was when they get splattered across the road or get run over or some other Darwinian death story.

The same thing with drugs. If you want to get high, overdose, run in traffic while high, etc, that's your business. The problem comes in when your actions affect others. Drunk driving, at any age, endangers not only yourself but everyone around you. Same with drugs. To keep their drug habit, there are those who resort to robbery which can have consequences both for the person being robbed but for the person doing the robbing. Death being the ultimate consequence.

That's what this all comes down to. At 21 you are (supposedly) able to make decisions as an adult which affect not only yourself but those around you (in reality you're an adult at 18 which is another fly in the ointment but that's another story). While there are those who can make adult-like decisions at 16 and others never become adults, the vast majority cannot make those decisions and so some restrictions need to be made.

It's the same reason insurance rates for teen drivers are twice the rate for those of adult drivers. On average, young, inexperienced drivers have higher accident rates than do people who are older and have more years of experience driving under their belts (some of them at least).