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

Don't they have anything better to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

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

[Hatta]

Also, if the students are breaking the law outside of school hours, isn't that a matter for the police and not the school?

This is the crux of the matter. Yes, those kids are idiots for posting evidence of illegal behavior for all to see. But the administrators have no jurisdiction over what goes on outside of school. He should have reported these pictures to the police, if anything.

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

[EightBits]

You're all missing the point. The reason the school administrators are punishing the kids instead of reporting them to the police is to avoid giving (or adding to) the kids' criminal records. Kids do all kinds of things and sometimes these things are illegal. In this case, these kids may have been doing something illegal. The administrators are trying to punish the kids so they learn not to do it again.

What if your parents caught you doing something illegal? Should they not punish you? Should they instead go straight to the police and turn you in? What kind of Gestapo bullcrap is that? Do you really want to live in a police state where you can't even confide in your own parents?

Consider the options. "You take the punishment we are dishing out or we turn these photos over to the police. Which do you prefer?" Most kids will take the school's punishment and they would be right and smart to do so. The school may or may not be dishing out appropriate punishment and that needs to be figured out. But they are at least trying to do the best thing for these kids and that is to discipline the kids without the extreme of getting the police involved.

There will be some who decide to not post their photos on facebook/myspace/etc... But most will still take pictures and that's still a liability. The school wants them to just not do these things in the first place. While they can't control people like that, they can influence and that's exactly what they are trying to do and that is the whole damn point of punishment.

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

[uniquename72]

he reason the school administrators are punishing the kids instead of reporting them to the police is to avoid giving (or adding to) the kids' criminal records. Incorrect. Guess what the police would do if they obtained pics of these underaged kids drinking? Absolutely nothing, because it would be impossible to prove that what's in those containers is alcohol.

As others have said, this all has to do with one thing: power. It's a lot easier to control kids than it is to teach them, so that's what schools do.

Fucking pathetic.

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

[miskatonic alumnus]

The lesson is not to stop "wrong" behavior. The lesson is not to get caught.

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

[causality]

If their child told them that they first sexually abused someone and then murdered them and dumped them in the river, should they not report this? I think you'll immediately say they should report this, but how do you draw the line? What objective standard of what crime is bad enough that it warrants reporting?

It's pretty simple, really. If that "crime" has a victim, report it. If not, then let people make their own mistakes, especially if you're talking about something like drinking a beer. The most severe action that is warranted in that case is informing the parents. To compare that to sexual abuse and murder is absurd; to put it (very) mildly, this is comparing an apple to an orange.

I know this idea is very scary to all of you law-enforcement-fantasy types who really think you can legislate morality, but controlling behavior is the least of your problems. If you really believe that putting a substance into your own body that someone else might disapprove of is morally wrong, what you need to improve is the power of your message and the reasoning behind it, not the government school's power to manipulate behavior by means of sanctions. The first option might actually persuade people to see things your way; the second option will drive said behavior underground and result in people who are better at not getting caught (namely, by not posting evidence on a public network).

Re:Rights not online

[truthsearch]

Kids taking pictures of themselves demonstrating that they aren't mature enough to drink responsibly...

How is that? According to the article one kid was just holding a drink. Another was standing behind a bar. The article makes no mention of any crazy antics. You're making that assumption because they're young and got in trouble.

The problem here is the system, not the students.

Your rights do not apply at School

[Children.of.the.Kron]

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."

Revenge of the nerds

[greg1104]

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.

Re:Bizarre

[Lumpy]

Almost every single USA law is based on Puritan ideals that started a long time ago. WE firmly believe that restricting people and controlling them is for their own good. Restrict alcohol, hell we even banned it for a few years for incredibly stupid reasons. We are doing the same now for drugs and sex and anything else deemed to be "unholy" or "bad" based on old Puritan ideals from over 300 years ago.

It's the root of our obesity, and almost every other problem that the rest of the world seems to not have.

Problem is , today you are called a nut for questioning the puritanical ideals.

The other problem is the whole point of the article shines light on a bigger problem.. Our children are incredibly stupid. They do things they know are wrong and will get them in trouble if their parents or officials find out about it, and then they publish it with incredible detail in a public forum and then SIGN IT!

The current crop of children here are incredibly stupid.... I blame the use of Corn syrup.

Re:Isn't it easy?

[C0rinthian]

I wouldn't necessarily be too keen about my own child drinking under age, but I wouldn't be at all happy about his invasion of privacy either - I'd consider that stalking.

If the pictures are posted to a profile with public access, what privacy is there to invade? You can't put these pictures up on display, then get upset that people see them.

Re:Hah.

[John Courtland]

Oh yeah, it took a LONG time with the district's lawyers to make sure things were kosher. There's nothing wrong with logging all the shit they did. Every parent signed an agreement stating all computer activity was logged, every login was prompted by a legalese message stating all activity was subject to logging.

Not that I'm all bonered up about annihilating a kid's future because he/she did some stupid shit while they were young, but the line must be drawn somewhere. Using school equipment to post pictures of highly illegal exploits is beyond that line.

Re:Hah.

[John Courtland]

In my case, it's possible but not probable. It would have taken quite an effort to generate the leagues of information (mostly photos) we managed to gather before the hammer fell on these kids. These were very explicit images of people doing very dumb things. Not only that, but the user accounts matched and everything. It would have been more work than just earning the scholarship justly, I'll tell you that. We were very thorough, lawsuits are not good PR, especially right before a referendum.

In the case from the article, that could be certainly be true. I'm glad I'm no longer in school and that when I was I didn't give a rusty rat fuck about scholarships or any of that. It's far too cutthroat for me.

Re:Hah.

[John Courtland]

I'm glad someone got some use out of my post. Certainly there are less than desirable aspects of America. But I don't need some holier-than-thou European to point them out, especially when it's based on some fictional account of events he/she invented in their head and not relevant to the story in any manner. I know plenty of great Europeans, I work with them all day. That said, there's plenty of shitty ones too. It's not like America has a monopoly on assholes.