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Student Expelled For Facebook Photo Description
flutterecho writes "A sophomore at Valdosta State University was expelled after criticizing his university's plan to build two new parking garages with student fees. In a letter apparently slipped under his dorm room door, Ronald Zaccari, the university's president, wrote that he 'present[ed] a clear and present danger to this campus' and referred to an image on the student's Facebook page which contained a threatening description. 'As additional evidence of the threat posed by Barnes, the document referred to a link he posted to his Facebook profile whose accompanying graphic read: "Shoot it. Upload it. Get famous. Project Spotlight is searching for the next big thing. Are you it?" It doesn't mention that Project Spotlight was an online digital video contest and that "shoot" in that context meant "record."' In a post-Virginia Tech world, has university surveillance of online identities gone too far?"
The best part is that I'm sure he has absolutely no recourse because they're free to expel any student at any time per the handbook.
--- Do you believe in the day?
I'm guessing that the student handbook disclaimer of "expel at will" could be dented by good legal representation.
Lawsuit waiting to happen. I hope they've got a healthy endowment.
Like me.
(I'm sorry, I had to add that last bit. Yes, it's Sunday morning, but it was low-hanging fruit... Like mine. OK, I'll quit now.)
You are welcome on my lawn.
Ever heard of the Streisand effect?
Is there any mean by which we can support this student ?
I mean we, as geeks, should support that guy. Is there any university email adress we can complain to for firing this student on such a stupid basis ?
AC.
A public university is held to a different standard that a private institution in regards to being able to expel students for arbitrary and capricious reasons since public institutions are partially tax-funded. I wonder if the ACLU would like to step up to the plate on this one.
I sure the hell wouldn't want to be in any way affiliated with such an oppressive institution. After he wins his case and gets his money back, he should consider an institution that upholds certain concepts like freedom of speech and independent thinking.
in the non-nigger world [...]
You seriously need psychiatric help.
Luckily for him, he didn't write banzai anywhere in his profile.
Otherwise he would have shipped straight to guantanamo resort with all that evidence he is a suicide bomber.
How do they know the students were not the victims of identity theft? A fellow student who hated them could very well set up fake Facebook accounts, fill them up with nasty photos, with the purpose of letting them to be discovered by the campus security. Even if a profile is owned by the students themselves, there is again no reason that a photo is not some kind of fake used for fun or just incorrect information as an inside joke between participants.
Steadicam operator to airport security personnel:
"We're here to shoot a pilot."
Hilarity ensues.
Well, if you RTFA, one could infer that referring to the garage as the Zaccari Memorial Parking Garage could be construed as threatening to university president Zaccari. It's wasn't just the Project Spotlight link.
It was easy to call bullshit, since we already had a system for that. More to the point, using people's fear of a lunatic going on a shooting rampage to justify ludicrous measures like my school's TV's or this George school expelling this student is a disgrace.
Palm trees and 8
You seriously need psychiatric help.
so do butterflies.
The school's president should be dismissed with prejudice for his actions, especially trying to bully the school's counseling service into providing him with "evidence" that the student was dangerous. I'd also dump the spineless jerks on the Board of Trustees.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
President:
president@valdosta.edu
University Relations:
jltanner@valdosta.edu
Address:
1500, N Patterson St. Valdosta, GA 31698
Telephone
+1 229-333-5800
or 800-618-1878
For your well reasoned & thought out responses.
I'd like to see him sue his educational institution for millions and millions to make an example out of them. Sue for a refund of tuition, lodging, lost time, and the rest for mental anguish then he can use that money at his next school which hopefully won't be as ignorant as this one. There is one thing that people seem to forget is absolutely needed: a healthy disrespect for authority. When someone is held above reproach they tend to turn into a dick. Accountability and it's prerequisite transparency allows the separation of people and jobs they don't deserve. It makes me fume and recall a quote from "Scent of a Woman" where Al Pacino's character states flatly: "If I was half the man I was five years ago I'd burn this school to the ground." when he is confronting the same type of idiots who don't care who's life they ruin as long as they're "right".
Shh.
I stumbled across his treatment of free speech on his campus here, basically students have a tiny Free Speech zone where they can speak freely between 12 to 1 pm and 5 to 6 pm, as long as they give 48 hours notice and comply with onerous regulations about maintaining order and decorum. I get the feeling he doesn't quite grasp the whole first amendment thing.
> what-is-this-privacy-of-which-you-speak
It's clear that the university president is an asshole, but what the hell has this to do with privacy? Perhaps you meant to type "freedom of speech"?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
how do ya stop schools shootings?
this is an unfortunate issue the resolution to which is not clear yet. but it has its origin in the change in the nature and character of our people-- there being not an insignificant amount of evidence indicating our entertainment industry is primarily responsible for this change.
as a grumpy old grampaw I find much of what is presented as "entertainment" to be just plain disgusting and there is no doubt that young kids watching such tripe are not going to be learning good things.
actually, the "Days of the Old West" were safer than downtown LA, Detroit, or DC are today. we need our old time Sunday preachers back and "Sunday, go to meet'n". not as a requirement mind, you, but as a good habit.
Challenge it, and if the school still expells you, consider a lawsuit. After all, you poured a lot of money into the college. They are operating as a business. They failed to provide you with the service they promised. They should have to give you a full refund for wrongful expulsion.
I don't know all the details, but I probably wouldn't buy their argument that the student threatened them. The college might not simply like what they have to say, so they do their best to exaggerate something in order to have grounds for expulsion. Schools don't like it when students challenge their spending habits, or so I think.
If I were a president of an institution and I thought that someone was a lunatic just waiting to shoot up the school, the last thing I would want to do is expell him under flimsy pretexts. It seems like that would be the LAST thing you would ever want to do. If this kid didn't have a motive, he sure as hell has one now.
Taking that into consideration I have a hard time believing the president acted in the best interest of the university whether Barnes was a threat or not.
http://greenobyl.com/ please.... think of the children!!
Do all public school administrators have some built in compulsion towards infringing tyrannical nonsense?
FAQs are evil.
if I was a betting man I'd wager that p2p networks will very shortly become a thing of the past
the reason being that these are used primarily for copyright violations
i just got a new ISP and I noticed when i read the Acceptable Use *policy* that they strongly discouraged p2p software
get over it kids, the party's over, RSN
University administrators looking at students' public facebook pages is perhaps a bit odd, but for administrators to have access to counselling records and private medical records seems like a far more important invasion of privacy to me.
This case demonstrates why privacy of medical records is so important - you complain about a car park being built and a paper-pusher with an axe to grind accesses your medical records and paints you as a madman if you ever set foot in a psychologist's office.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
I don't know the case, but the most common reason to believe the information in this kind of cases is that the accused stand behind their words.
As the student in this case is politically active, he is probably much more likely to grab an opportunity to defend himself, rather than go for denial.
...after they published a FAQ on "troubleshooting".
They just got their first lesson in Media War 101: the war takes place in the media. But the test asks "where are the bodies buried?", which is "in the lawyer's office".
Since the school has expelled them with the explicit reason that "shooting video to publish is a 'clear and present danger to the school'", but it isn't, they should have an easy case to win. Which is a direct hit to the school, and will probably sink their parking garage battleship once the ongoing story gets back into the media. Because if the mass media loves one thing these days, it's seeing new people making news content for free that it can circulate to pad its ads, especially if the story is about the power of the media.
"VTech backlash" by cowardly schools is ugly. But the backlash to that backlash, if brought by brave students, should decimate that enemy.
--
make install -not war
I do believe that any school building project has to be approved by the city, which then promptly posts the building plans for PUBLIC debate before the permit is granted. ( at least they do here )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
that is an internet issue that will most likely soon be resolved.
lots of bad crap gets sent to the net every second. and this ain't good, from id theft, online fraud, phishing, bot-nets and spam, to web site philosophy
the resolution is simple: and that is to establish a Point of Control and that should be where the ISP obtains access to The Net. the ISP should be responsible for verifying the ID of its customers, and on presentation of a proper warrant, verify to authorities who posted what
ISP not in compliance would be disconnected and any country not requiring ISP to comply would be disconnected.
the concept of remote software updates also has to go into the garbage can so that we can get rid of RATS. We have to be rid of RATS so that sign-ons and activity can be properly verified and to do this everyone has a right to a CLEAN computer
What about the rest of the students who weren't expelled and are being educated by these idiots? That's the real story.
I'm all for prosecuting people who are dumb enough to post pictures/videos of themselves doing illegal activities, but this is going too far. He was using his right to free speech. Quite frankly, I would never attend a university like this, and I hope someone can take this school down a peg. You can't just silence critics.
I am posting AC because last year this kind of thing happened at my university also. The president of the university was catching a lot of flak from students about putting nearly 50% of his budget towards the football team instead of academic programs or even other sports programs (in fact the other sports programs were so under-funded that they closed the pool and made the swimming team practice at the city public pool.) He got mad and the next thing you know a group of about 10 students were informed that they would not be able to attend classes next term because they had "failed to adapt to campus life." All of them had been vocal members of the groups opposing the president. Three of them were seniors due to graduate that year. All of the students were allowed to return after they threatened to play the lawsuit game. I think that the student from the article could probably do the same since the comment from the picture seems to have been taken totaly out of context.
Interesting story, but I think the question shouldn't be whether the University has the right to look at your profiles online....you're putting them in a public forum - one must assume that the information you present in said public forum is viewable by the public. I mean seriously, it's like having a loud conversation in an airport terminal and suing someone for overhearing your conversation.
This is not a privacy issue, it's an issue of the university overreacting in a way that I'm sure would be inconsistent with their code of conduct. If it's not, then the student needs to bring suit and talk to his student union about policy changes.
Quiz: True or False -- On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your middle name?
You'd have to be living under a rock not to realize that Facebook (and MySpace) are being used by schools and employers and angry colleagues to deny employment or discipline students. Why would anyone keep a Facbook page up and running today? So you can show your "friends" how much dope you smoked last weekend? That's just stupid.
Maybe I'm too old to understand, but back in the '70s when when a doper bragged about lost weekends the bragging wasn't recorded.
Friends don't let friends post on Facebook.
If I was a betting man, I'd take you for a lot of money.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
"We think this student might be violent, let's slip an expulsion note under his door."
It should be interesting to see what the setllement amount is going to be.
Switch to a more user friendly ISP then. "This is how it works. Whatever you sink, we build back up. Whomever you sue, ten new pirates are recruited. Wherever you go, we are already ahead of you. You are the past and the forgotten, we are the internet and the future." -Brokep You should understand that P2P is not just something solid . It's an idea , and cannot be destroyed .
Slipping shoelaces ?
This is not "online surveillance going too far". It's "Some universities employ complete morons who can't even read. This hazs serious consequenes, such as students expelled for non-reasons."
Why is that news? Maybe sections with a counter in each, such as "$UNIVERSITY expels $STUDENT for reason $STUPID" would do it, with an index that links to each relevant article. Good idea for a web 2.0 news site, that.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
As someone that works for a college this type of action concerns me. Lately college employees are encouraged to use Facebook and Myspace to interact with students. But is seems to used to spy on each other instead. I think its time to encourage people on college campuses to get off these virtual social networks and start real social networks. And if colleges continue to use these sites clear guidelines need to be set up for the faculty and staff.
I think this group on facebook is a good start.
Faculty Ethics on Facebook
Type: Internet & Technology - Cyberculture
Description: A discussion forum for Facebook participants to suggest activity guidelines for faculty. Proposed guidelines include: 1. Keeping official course activities in official online tools and not on Facebook. 2. Never requiring students to participate in Facebook or having Facebook participation influence a course grade. (An exception is for class projects that might use Facebook for research purposes [such as a statistical analysis of how Facebook groups grow and fade] and make their connection to a course explicit.) 3. Not friending students unless they request the connection. Not poking students. Never pressuring students to friend the professor (such as repeated mention of a faculty profile in class). 4. Accepting friend requests from all students (unless the instructor makes the decision not to friend students at all). 5. Not looking at student profiles unless the faculty member has been friended by the student and even then using Facebook information judiciously and for educational purposes. In short, not spying on students, but getting to know them better when invited to do so. 6. Faculty members should avoid association with Facebook groups with explicit sexual content or views that might offend or compromise the student / teacher relationship. This guideline must be applied sensitively within the context of a diverse educational environment in which both students and faculty practice tolerance and accept competing views. 7. Taking extreme care with privacy settings and faculty profile content to limit profiles to information relevant to educational purposes. A broad variety of information may be appropriate, however, given the area of expertise / subject, the local customs of an instructor's school, and the personal dynamics of his or her classroom. Content should be placed thoughtfully and periodically reconsidered to maintain this educational standard. 8. Exercising appropriate discretion when using Facebook for personal communications (with friends, colleagues, other students, etc.) with the knowledge that faculty behavior on Facebook may be used as a model by our students. 9. Never misrepresenting oneself by using a false name or persona on Facebook, unless that characterization is connected explicitly with the real identity of the instructor. 10. Considering that the uneven power dynamics of the academy in which professors have authority over students, continue to shape the online relationship, even when the network tool (such as Facebook) is apparently democratic. 11. Keeping wall posts and other Facebook communication in concord with standard ethical practices of the educational relationship. 12. Never posting official course communication (feedback on an assignment, for example) in a public area of Facebook. Feedback might be given through private Facebook messaging when the student has asked a question via Facebook or a previous friend connection exists. These guidelines are intended to be points for consideration and not hard and fast rules or laws of faculty behavior. Individual faculty must make individual decisions about the best practices in specific classrooms and educational contexts, always following the principle of nurturing student learning.
As in most religions, it's the followers that turn people off to the religion. And Mac users are the worst.
What this sort of thing does is to generate adults who keep their heads down and won't make negative comments no matter what the government, their employer, ... does. This means that the few who run the country/company/... can commit outrageous acts and get away with it because the population is too scared to complain.
It is just this sort of mentality that lets the government get away with some of the huge restrictions of freedom that it is imposing.
This sort of thinking is what kills democracy.
I am talking about the USA here, but I am a Brit and can see this sort of thing will also happen here... where our government ignores us and the law anyway.
Obviously the university doesn't have a photography department. Otherwise they'd have a ton of these going out to students. Idiots. Behold higher education in America! The time has come for such actions to jeopardize their federal funding. Its time to starve political correctness to death!
It's impossible to know what's going on in the minds of the administrators without reading the comments that this fellow posted -- did he simply criticize, or did he threaten? Is is a person of conscience, or a lunatic?
The only info we're given is extremely vague. If the school officials were really over-reacting, it should be obvious from the comments. So where are they?
I smell sensationalist journalism...
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
I move that whomever uses /that/ phrase be summarily shot.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Has university surveillance of online identities gone too far?
Is it really relevant here? Someone in the school administration wanted to silence a single student who raised awareness about a project that was pissing away a significant amount of student money. So they went out, found a flimsy, bullshit excuse and ran with it.
It isn't a matter of active and sustained surveillance of students - it's the matter of a administrator (or one of his minions) doing something stupid that will cost the school quite a few bucks in legal fees and the upcoming settlement in order to protect one of his pet projects.
We all know politics in the real world has pork and corruption, but the academic world takes it a step further in some cases. When you factor in the effect of tenure, it can get ugly very quickly, especially if the tenured employees feel threatened.
Quaint notions such as "the law" are ignored - primarily because even though their actions put the school at legal jeopardy, the actual employee really is unaffected.
Besides, college students aren't really known for their ability to retain lawyers easily.
I speak with some authority, since I was VP of student government and finance director PCC Sylvania. I've spent a few years in student government and suffice it to say, I've seen a few things.
For a bit of background, PCC Sylvania is a campus w/ ~24,000 students. Roughly 86,000 students currently attend PCC's multiple campuses, making it one of the largest schools in terms of enrollment in the USA.
Granted, PCC isn't a university, but from what I've seen, student fees are handled in more or less the same manner at any school.
Student government didn't get all the student fees - a significant portion of the collected fees went to projects run by (factions in the) administration and only a few percent trickled down and could be spent by the elected student government.
I'm not going to say it was all wasted, but I can completely understand how people can get pissed at how large portions (5-6 figures, year after year) of it were spent.
What can you really expect? After all, you are talking about a funding source that is essentially guaranteed, with virtually no oversight and run / spent by tenured administrators / professors. You're going to have corruption, you're going to have abuses of power and this is really nothing new.
The only thing different here is that it made the papers because even though this type of arbitrary expulsion isn't exactly new (it has been on the rise for the last few years - it's not a result of Virginia Tech), it still makes a fairly good story, especially with the "early departure".
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
In a post-[Event X] world, have needless appeals to emotion gone too far?
/. user - I thought we were supposed to be more informed and enlightened than knee-jerking idiots?
A couple of days ago I posted a comment against the constant references to 9/11 being used to justify or explain things that have very little to do with preventing terrorism or other terrible event, and this is another example, and the shame this time is that it's a comment from a
In a post-Virginia Tech world, has university surveillance of online identities gone too far?"
What has Virginia Tech got to do with university surveillance, ever? Seung-Hui Cho was well known on campus for being weird, handing in obviously violently disturbed plays for class assignments, and even writing a story about a school shooting which the university was aware of. Now I know that what one writes is not neccessarily a reflection of what one intends to do, but it's not like anyone needed to spy on Seung-Hui's Facebook page, if indeed he had one, to see that he had serious issues going on - his social problems were far more severe than some kid writing a comment about his teacher building a parking garage, and were being waved in the face of his tutors for more than a year before the horrendous act took place.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
I am getting sick of this sick and cruel world the Bush administration have created, where even saying 1 word in a non-threatening manner can get you kicked out of school. According to dictionary.com, terrorism is defined as " the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes." Key word: threats. Political purposes. So the Bush administration are terrorists. The federal government are terrorists. The principals of schools that suspend and expel students for even so much as saying something in a context where it could be somewhat threatening are terrorists. All these people use threats to make people fear terrorism so they can make shitty legislation to pretend to help us but screw up the country instead (perfect example: the USA PATRIOT Act).
I've seen this first hand in my own city. My sister's middle school have just banned hugging. In some Spanish and Hispanic cultures, hugging is the proper way to greet someone.
And then my friend at my high school was suspended for 10 days and almost expelled from school. What was his crime that caused the school to think he posed a significant threat to the schools saftey? He made a political statement about the exact same thing I mentioned above. The school, in their attempts to make sure we were safe, and after hours of Googleing, finally found something. The date he referenced to was a holiday in London, on that day someone tried to blow up London. So they thought he was going to BLOW UP LONDON! He is an horner student, extremely smart, never even had a detention before, and a popular student. So since the school decided he was a terrorist and trying to "blow up" London, they searched his belongings using a another shitty policy that they can search students stuff for no reason with "probable cause", and found a money clip with a 2 cm blade. 2cm. That is barely long enough to cut a piece of paper. But the school brought the poor kid out of school in HANDCUFFS and charged him with possession of a weapon. He was processed, booked, and thrown in a holding cell like a criminal. He has since been put back in school (even the cops thought the school screwed up big time here), but its on his perminate record that he was suspended, so if he tries to get to collage, he might have big problems. The good news is he has the ACLU about to sue the school if they don't remove everything about this from his record. But many victims of the system don't know about that stuff, so they just have to suffer. I never thought that would happen in _MY_ school. But it did. So now we all live in fear at school. Because the principal is a terrorist. Hell, if the principal were to read this, the cops would probaly be here in 5 minutes saying I'm making "terroristic threats" or something like that.
and the answer is yes. this university name should be well published so that everyone will know what quality its administration is, and act accordingly.
Read radical news here
Your resolution has passed!
Dude, that sucks for you.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
So how are Universities normally supposed to fund new constructions?
Do not forget that the student was expelled as a side effect of his protest against the new 30M dollar garage to be built with the student tuition money. I wonder if his protest against this construction was the real reason for the administrative action?
You can't handle the truth.
Of course he was expelled. He was under double-secret probation! Duh!
Sorry, couldn't resist the "Animal House" reference.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
*hands you a shit-bar personally made just for you*
Looks like when Al Gore "invented the Internet" he left a big security hole for these home-grown terrorist(s) with this Facebook thing. Not only to pray on innocent, young, vertiginous females - Clinton! - but it's the source for yet another scandal - Clinton! Clinton! - and right where our beloved Commander-in-Chief did his Vietnam tourist duty, Georgia. We live in dangerous times where sophomores can once again threaten campus admin - like in Clinton's favorite decade. These sopho-terrorists hate America - the greatest nation ever invented - and want to digitize us back to the olden days, pre-BCS where we never really were sure who was National Champion. Real Americans won't stand for that.
1. Valdosta State is in Georgia.
2. Georgia borders both Alabama and Florida.
This should help to explain things a little better.
Way to waste your mod points on me, douchebag.
This is between me and JockTroll. Stay the fuck out of it.
Then you can take it somewhere else.
It will be nice when people between 20-30 begin to advance. I think when we become the managers, CEO's, etc, I think you'll see less and less of a crack down on social networking sites.
Bwahaha. That's cool. I'm glad PSU isn't the only campus with the fake parties. And the administration claiming it was noise violations is full of shit. We've set up fake events in empty apartments, just to have four cops show up and pound on the door of some scared-shitless freshman who just got out of the shower.
/floor/ by adding junk to the system =)
Fuck em. Noise violation? Maybe they meant that they were raising the noise
It's a state university. That means they're bound by the Constitution and cannot expel students without affording them due process.
Keep in mind that "due process" does not mean you get your "day in court". An administrative hearing conducted by university staff counts. Due process merely means that the established procedure is conducted by the proper authorities.
People in positions of authority, or with public profiles of some sort, learn early on (especially if they've been raised to expect it) that they need to lead two lives: that things they write, say, and record are part of a public persona, and that they have to consider the impact of them at all times.
Most of the population didn't have this concern, and this was, in fact, one of the consolations of a life of obscurity that most of us lead: that we had a certain freedom to do and say what we think without real consequences.
Google changes that, as one can now fairly easily find the online traces of just about anyone who has an internet presence at all. Sites like Facebook, LJ, and MySpace give one the ability to express themselves to the world: realizing that this is a double-edged sword is a painful apprenticeship to segments of society that never realized it.
Anyone missing the big picture? ... What about the rest of the students who weren't expelled and are being educated by these idiots? That's the real story.
Well, you are missing an important detail. Instructors and administrators are two very different groups of people.
They have the right to:
1) Look at his Facebook stuff
2) Be stupid/incompetent
3) Be arseholes
But they went past acceptable bounds of stupidity and/or arseholeness.
Not even Ken Starr would be dumb enough to argue for "free to expel" rule. That case muddied the water about what high school administrators could do discipline their charges but did not amount to abuse at will. It's too bad Ken Starr and the majority of the Supreme Court did not see how easy their decision would be to abuse and how it puts the burden of proof onto the victim.
This fails even those restrictive tests. The student is a sane and non violent adult and the material is more that puerile provocation. It's clear that the administration eliminated a student who got in the way of a development project. It stinks like bribery and the administration is going to be lucky if an investigation does not dig any up.
They'll expel someone for something like this but for harassement on a Facebook page that has the picture of the school, saying they are students of the school and they harass another student (in a gross way, by the way)and were expressing their opinion over an instructor (which is fine), but they were lying about what he has done, they get to do "refective essays". What gives? These students also deleted what they have done, but the person that got attacked made screenshots of what they have done, to show what has happened. Are these kids that stupid to say stuff like that, saying they are a student of the school, having their group with a picture of said school and their names next to postings of such? I think their priorties are out of place, that school and mine. Of the story, though, I know, different school and obviously of the context that the other ad there really didn't make them happy, but it was in a different context obviously, which I find them to be expelling the student over it really ridiculous. Also, they're spending time on stuff like this where they can actually make a big difference in a student's life and do something more instead of making more students angry as it is.
Hate that guy from down the hall in your dorm?
- Take a picture of him
- Create a FACEBOOK homepage for "him"
- Trashtalk the most senior professor of his major, and criticize the university
- Wait for the idiot to be expelled
Of course, I would never do this personally....but if I can imagine it, someone has already DONE this...and for this reason alone, this case should be dropped. Unless they can prove beyond reasonable doubt that some anonymous coward did not FAKE the FACEBOOK page in question...but it doesn't sound like they gave this guy a chance to prove that or not.
Re: your sig. Ron Paul on Martin Luther King: "a world-class adulterer" who "seduced underage girls and boys" and "replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration"
Ron Paul on the closet: "I miss the closet. Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities."
Ron Paul on San Francisco gays: "[T]hese men don't really see a reason to live past their fifties. They are not married, they have no children, and their lives are centered on new sexual partners." Also, "they enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick."
Ron Paul on protecting oneself against 'urban youth' "If you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course, be registered to you, but one bought privately (through the classifieds, for example)."
Also:
Ron Paul wants to define life as starting at conception, build a fence along the US-Mexico border, prevent the Supreme Court from hearing Establishment Clause cases or the right to privacy, pull out of the UN, end birthright citizenship, and abolish the Federal Reserve in order to put America back on the gold standard. He was also the sole vote against divesting US federal government investments in corporations doing business with the genocidal government of the Sudan.
Oh, and he believes that the Left is waging a war on religion and Christmas, he's against gay marriage, is against the popular vote, wants the estate tax repealed, is STILL making racist remarks, and believes in New World Order conspiracy theories.
Trolling or not, as a US native I must agree that this country is definitely going down a road of increasing suckage - mainly due to our adolescent culture of ignorance, shortsightedness, greed and selfishness. On the other hand, we do have the best entertainment media in the world!
-- thinkyhead software and media
You mean "annihilate" not "decimate".
This kid is a part of Students against violating the environment. Basically a student environmentalist version of PETA. He's been an annoyance to the school by protesting a parking garage. The school overreacted and expelled him, he's suing and will probably win, and the President of the school has resigned. /Former VSU student
How about your mother's flabby and distended cunt, for starters?
You apparently believe in policing others' way of life. How does it feel to be a warhawk hypocrite? Don't answer. Just fantasize about me when you're crying and rubbing your thin stub tonight with your cheese-encrusted hair-palm.
Fuck you.
Everyone, think about your posting history in various blogs. Is there anything there that could come back to bite you? Even a misquote or misinterpretation?
If Joe McCarthy was alive today, cracks about "our Soviet Russian overlords" would get a significant portion of Slashdotters dragged in front of a Senate committee.
Have gnu, will travel.
The Facebook angle is beside the point. A university president summarily dismissing a student by slipping a note under his door is extremely bizarre. Ordinarily you'd expect lower-level administrators to be involved, for there to be meetings and hearings and counseling offered. The president wouldn't be involved at all, except to sign off on the decision (if that.) It sounds like the president is making a very rinky-dink attempt to intimidate the student while bypassing the official channels.
Sometimes you see this sort of petty thuggery by corrupt small-town public officials (or College Republicans), but they usually don't ascend much higher than that. Their careers are self-limiting because once they rise to the level where their behavior is subjected to the slightest scrutiny, they scurry like cockroaches from the light.
Toll-Free: 1-800-618-1878
University Relations
Valdosta State University
Valdosta, GA 31698-0215
229-333-5980
229-245-3891 (Fax) jltanner@valdo
President
Valdosta State University
Valdosta, GA 31698-0180
229-333-5952
229-333-7400 (Fax) president@valdosta.edu
this propaganda is getting really old. Newsletters were published in Paul's name when he was in private practice-- he didn't edit or approve of them, and he has acknlowedged his mistake and has repudiated them publicly many times. his policies include reforming racist drug laws. Libertarianism is about the individual, not about abject groups. If he is such a homophobe, how come he is in favor of private contracts (marriage) between consenting people (same or opposite sex) and is endorsed by gay rights advocate and blogger andrew sullivan. this stuff (you posted) is all just FUD.
i don't agree with everything he says and wants to do, but he's honest and straight forward.. a rarity in today's political climate, and I don't think that's a bad thing. and despite the FUD and those opposed to him, he's gone from 0% to 10-15% of the polls in less than a year; because honesty and liberty are powerful catalysts... and efforts to disparage or vilify Paul will only galvanize his supporters further.
and as far as the Bush's and NWO (etc).. what a crazy idea.. i mean, all sorts of nutjobs like the BBC, are falling for this scheme ;)
...involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell House & George Bush's Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.
Let me quote these crazy "journalist" nutjobs.. A group of influential powerbrokers, led by Prescott Bush (Bush's grandfather), plotted a coup to overthrow FDR and implement a fascist dictatorship in the U.S. based around the ideology of Mussolini and Hitler.
- the FBI
If you read the article, you'll see the student suggest the guy would be dead. With all this school and college shootings, you can't ignore the flippant and ignorant remarks from students. They are just children and they can't control their mouths or their emotions.
This doesn't mean I agree he should have been expelled, but unlike the summary suggests, this student has a couple of loose screws.
In Australia, the head of a university is never called a principal, generally they are 'Vice-Chancellor'. I'm Australian, and - 'principals' and 'lockers' - yep, that's a high schooler talking.
It's a *degree* you receive after you've already *graduated* from college. I see nothing redundant or ambiguous (which are contradictory!) about it. If it was redundant, you could remove part and it would retain its meaning, but that's obviously not true here. If it was ambiguous, we wouldn't know what one meant by it, but that's obviously not true here either.
"Hopes of appearing authentic"? Damn, you're even more full of yourselves than usual. First of all, I don't know that any American university (short of a couple of the more elitist Ivies) thinks that being British makes them "authentic". Second, *every* university I've ever visited had colleges. For example, the University of Washington (definitely not in the Ivy League) has a College of Arts and Sciences, a College of Engineering, a College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and so on. It's not unique to the Ivies or British-kiss-ass-colleges or anywhere else.
Meh. I kind of like freedom of association. Are you old enough to remember the 1970's? Did you guys like having the top tax bracket be 98%? No wonder you are so proud of your ancient schools; between the funding and the rules and the taxes, nobody can ever afford to start a new one.
Under the current set of laws, it seems to be a meaningless concept in America. The article spells out that "age of license" (which varies by activity) is what actually determines what you're allowed to do. It even claims that "Age of majority pertains solely to the acquisition of control over one's person", and yet, consuming alcohol isn't granted by majority, even though it seems to be purely a matter of "control over one's person". (Tobacco has a younger age of license, and other drugs are never allowed.) Age of majority is the "legal recognition that one has grown into an adult", but apparently this "recognition" is completely independent of any actual things you may do.
The home of Cockney rhyming slang is accusing *us* of being confusing? What cheek.
It's great when the English visit American webpages and then presume to tell us how we're using the language all wrong. No wait, the other thing. Tedious.
Relevant Case Law
42 U.S.C. Section 1983
Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress...
http://www.peoples-law.org/individual-rts/civil-rights/1983_exactwords.htm
Dwyer v. Oceanport School District
School officials will pay a former student $117,500 to settle a lawsuit he filed claiming his First Amendment rights were violated after administrators punished him for material posted on his Web site.
http://www.splc.org/newsflash.asp?id=1126
Beidler v. North Thurston Sch. Dist
A superior court judge ruled in July that the North Thurston County School District violated the constitutional rights of a student who was suspended for ridiculing a school administrator on his personal Web site. In late January 1999, the school principal placed Beidler on "emergency expulsion." According to Beidler, the principal told him some teachers said they felt uncomfortable about having Beidler in their classes due to the content of his website. The principal also testified that he found the website "personally appalling" and "real inappropriate. On July 18, 2000, a Washington trial court judge granted summary judgment to Beidler on his First Amendment claims. The judge first noted that the First Amendment rights of public school students remain constant even in the age of the Internet. "Today the first amendment protects student speech to the same extent as in 1979 or 1969, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Tinker."
http://www.splc.org/report_detail.asp?id=448&edition=4
Flaherty v. Keystone Oaks Sch. District
A local school district has agreed to pay $60,000 in partial settlement of lawsuit brought by a former student who was kicked off the volleyball team because he posted an Internet message criticizing an art teacher, the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania announced today.
http://www.aclu.org/privacy/speech/15185prs20021118.html
O'Brien v. Westlake City Schools Board of Education
Sean O'Brien, while a sixteen-year-old junior at Westlake High School, created a website in March 1998 that lampooned his band teacher Raymond Walczuk. His web page "raymondsucks.org" contained several unflattering comments about Walczuk. School officials settled with O'Brien by agreeing to pay him $30,000, expunging the suspension from his record and writing a letter of apology
http://www.freedomforum.org/packages/first/censorshipinternetspeech/part3.htm
Beussink v. Woodland R-IV School District
Brandon Beussink, then a junior at Woodland High School, created his own homepage on his own computer at his own home. The homepage was "highly critical" of the school administration and included vulgar language in his opinions of teachers and the principal. The principal initially suspended Beussink for five days because he was offended by the content on the site, and he later extended the suspension to ten days. "Disliking or being upset by the content of a student's speech is not an acceptable justification for limiting student speech under Tinker," the judge wrote.
http://www.freedomforum.org/packages/first/censorshipinternetspeech/part3.htm
Mahaffey v. Aldrich
An unpublished decis
Relevant Case Law
42 U.S.C. Section 1983
Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress...
http://www.peoples-law.org/individual-rts/civil-rights/1983_exactwords.htm
Dwyer v. Oceanport School District
School officials will pay a former student $117,500 to settle a lawsuit he filed claiming his First Amendment rights were violated after administrators punished him for material posted on his Web site.
http://www.splc.org/newsflash.asp?id=1126
Beidler v. North Thurston Sch. Dist
A superior court judge ruled in July that the North Thurston County School District violated the constitutional rights of a student who was suspended for ridiculing a school administrator on his personal Web site. In late January 1999, the school principal placed Beidler on "emergency expulsion." According to Beidler, the principal told him some teachers said they felt uncomfortable about having Beidler in their classes due to the content of his website. The principal also testified that he found the website "personally appalling" and "real inappropriate. On July 18, 2000, a Washington trial court judge granted summary judgment to Beidler on his First Amendment claims. The judge first noted that the First Amendment rights of public school students remain constant even in the age of the Internet. "Today the first amendment protects student speech to the same extent as in 1979 or 1969, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Tinker."
http://www.splc.org/report_detail.asp?id=448&edition=4
Flaherty v. Keystone Oaks Sch. District
A local school district has agreed to pay $60,000 in partial settlement of lawsuit brought by a former student who was kicked off the volleyball team because he posted an Internet message criticizing an art teacher, the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania announced today.
http://www.aclu.org/privacy/speech/15185prs20021118.html
O'Brien v. Westlake City Schools Board of Education
Sean O'Brien, while a sixteen-year-old junior at Westlake High School, created a website in March 1998 that lampooned his band teacher Raymond Walczuk. His web page "raymondsucks.org" contained several unflattering comments about Walczuk. School officials settled with O'Brien by agreeing to pay him $30,000, expunging the suspension from his record and writing a letter of apology
http://www.freedomforum.org/packages/first/censorshipinternetspeech/part3.htm
Beussink v. Woodland R-IV School District
Brandon Beussink, then a junior at Woodland High School, created his own homepage on his own computer at his own home. The homepage was "highly critical" of the school administration and included vulgar language in his opinions of teachers and the principal. The principal initially suspended Beussink for five days because he was offended by the content on the site, and he later extended the suspension to ten days. "Disliking or being upset by the content of a student's speech is not an acceptable justification for limiting student speech under Tinker," the judge wrote.
http://www.freedomforum.org/packages/first/censorshipinternetspeech/part3.htm
Mahaffey v. Aldrich
An unpublished decis
you might hope ya take my money
but p2p is a problem in that it facilitates copyright violations. taking p2p off the net would be one way to help control copyright violations and I ain't gonna bet that won't happen
The idea that discourse on elite campuses is a nontrivial degree to the left of discourse in the nation as a whole is not born out of some study -- sound or not -- it is a pretty obvious fact about college campuses that anyone who had attends a prestigious university notices. It may not be as extreme as some think-tank neocons think, and it certainly isn't as alarming as the David Horowitzes of the world think, but there is a definite tilt. I don't think there's much to the old liberal media bias trope, but on campuses, there is definitely not a equal mix of liberal and conservative advocates.
And why would there be? People who can afford to compete for spots at the top schools are more likely to belong to a social class that is more liberal. Students at a campus are likely to be people of an age where many people are at their most liberal. The current crop of specialty academic departments are more likely to interest liberals. Beyond that, staying in school long enough to become a professor means you've thrived in a liberal environment for long enough.
But so what? That doesn't stop conservatives from getting a good education. And there is little evidence that liberal academia hurts the conservative movement or its ideas -- maybe even the opposite.
And who cares about an entire university faculty's party preferences, really? A lot of profs are scientists, whose ideology matters very little, and who usually average out to be center-left moderates, like many people in their social class. That the Woman's Studies department is overwhelmingly leftist doesn't matter that much to me. You know that going in and you avoid the department if that sort of thing bothers you.
All that really matters is that students learn how to think critically, do their own research, and write their ideas well. As long as you learn how to learn, you'll be okay even if what you learned wasn't ever so perfectly balanced.
omnia tua castra sunt nobis
You're expelled.
Why would anyone think they could air their grievances in a peaceful way in an open forum... This is America after all... Universities aren't supposed to prepare people to be proper citizens who can think and act for themselves, or show any creativity... You're supposed to give them your money, and be a good little sheeple. I weep for future generations...
Logic is the beginning of reason, not the end of it.
I grew up near Valdosta, attended another school that is part of the University System of Georgia, and have visited friends who attended Valdosta State on several occasions. I am not one bit surprised by this. This is south Georgia were conformity is embraced and an open mind is a tool of the devil. People enjoy their power over people and do whatever necessary to maintain it.
If it helps give a bit of insight into the thinking at this school, let me share this. When selecting a school to attend, I spoke with the head of Valdosta's computer science department. I asked about what opportunities the school offered for learning new technologies (specifically, advanced programming techniques and an opportunity to get hands-on experience with carrier grade network routing and switching equipment). He advised me to go elsewhere if I wanted to learn modern computing principles because they were simply interested in offering a basic CS program with nothing exceptional in the academics.
Undergrads=investment
Graduate Students=generators of IP
Professors=managers
Provosts,presidents,etc.=CEOs and boardmembers
Long gone is the Athenian ideal!
Protest by encouraging intelligent graduates to teach at community college! Education for the masses! Take a few community college courses yourself! Learn a foreign language! Start up groups that stimulate intelligent debate! Teach a class yourself!
University education is nothing more than fodder for the status quo and the universities know it and take advantage of it.
So Web 2.0 is Usenet 1.0?
And having a large jacket makes it easier to shoplift, so what? There are plenty of legitimate p2p applications that have nothing to do with copyright violation.
The cynic in me suspects that a far better reason for ISPs to throttle p2p traffic is that it changes the general pattern of data flow from mostly downloading to fairly balanced upload and download, which makes the limited upload bandwidth on consumer connections far more noticeable. Blocking p2p in the name of rights protection is a convenient way to delay having to provide faster upload speeds to most users.
"Algebraical symbols are used when you don't know what you are talking about" - BCS
Some countries employ complete morons who can't read, so explain how being deported is such a bad thing.
...
Some companies employ complete morons who can't read, so explain how being fired is such a bad thing.
Some insurance companies employ complete morons who can't read, so explain how losing your insurance is such a bad thing.
defending students in unusually egregious caaes like this. Or forbidding employers and educational institutions to use it for stalking purposes in their AUP and bringing the hammer down on violators. (I don't mean deleting their accounts, I mean high profile breach of contract lawsuit.)
If Facebook gets to be too dangerous to "be yourself" on, users are going to bug out to places Facebook can't monetize.
I agree that the long run solution is that everyone will have so much minor "offensive" crap easily findable online that it won't mean anything anymore, but IMO, that's a generational shift.
Tech Public Policy stuff
> Students at a campus are likely to be people of an age
> where many people are at their most liberal.
True enough.
But why do the staff and faculty have to pander to it?
It like that probably because the staff and faculty have never graduated to the Real World, so haven't had to grow out of their own youthful idealism.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
The "Legal Adulthood" thing is also complicated. I think moosesocks is referring to the age of contractual capacity which is indeed 16 in Scotland, however with some caveats (which the interested or bored can Google for themselves). AFAIK he's right that it's 18 in England and Wales, and Northern Ireland (the other two UK legal jurisdictions), however other "legal ages" vary, for example driving is 17 (with a probationary period in NI), drinking is 18 everywhere, the age of consent is 16 except for NI (where it is 17 for the moment, however it is being reduced in the near future) and voting is 18 everywhere. The UK has never had uniform laws because of the three distinct legal systems the fact that NI had its own government for about 50 years until the early 1970s. Since devolution in 1998, we're now a de facto federation (albeit a rather ad hoc and unbalanced one) so in a way we're a little closer to the US than we used to with respect to geographical differences in law and policy.
Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel."
Heh, nicely stated, and cogent. Online surveillance is bad and all, but this isn't a case of that. Administrative bodies should feel perfectly free to monitor any information that a person has deliberately made public.
How does someone come to despise education that much?! Did the FBI take you from your home, send you to MIT, and lock you in a dormitory where you were forced to matriculate?
Let me guess: you parents threatened to take away your trust-fund if you didn't finish college. I can see how that might make someone feel "imprisoned". Nevertheless, you were free to leave at any time.
Yes, and as said above: And I note that DAs and cops are not known for liberal bias.
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
The behavior of the school president and at least some other portions of the administration were clearly outrageous. Given that what would be appropriate consequences to the individuals and institution? I off3er the following: 1) Loss of acedemic credentials at the end of the current acedemic year. 2) Loss of all public funding for one or more years. 3) Termination for cause of the president resulting in the forfeiture of retirement benefits. 4) Loss of tenure and or termination for cause of those responsible for overseeing these actions. 5) Termination for the individual who illegaly shared protected medical information. 6) Criminal prosecution of the above individual. 7) Civil proceedings against both involved individuals on the basis of civil rights violations, due proceee violations, Defamation, Slander, Libel (all of these and they are different offences do appear to have been present), etc... Frankly the state should just put the institution into recievership, relieve the entire administration of their duties pending the outcome of an investigation and appoint an appropriate panel to manage the institution in the meantime. Seriously soomething like this could indeed cause irreperable harm to this student and he should probably recieve an award commensurate to his anticipate liftime earning (including benefits such as retirement/healthcare/etc...) less the value of a minimum wage job and with punative damages in addition.
Can anybody say "saw the writing on the wall" (even if he wasn't sure what the words meant, exactly)?
Listen to what I say, not what I mean...
Shoot- /. ?
Does this mean I'll now be expelled from
(On Soviet slashdot, it is rumoured that Commander Tacov and KDawsov shoot YOU!)
.
- aqk
F U
False analogies, the lot. We are after all talking about an institute of higher learning, a place that teaches reading!
:p
If you ever had to do tech support for PhD programmers you would be less certain about just what the hell a university teaches.
This must be the guy who educated George Bush.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
The school's response to his post is what's the problem here, not the fact that members of the University's administration read information that was posted freely for everyone to view. University administrators have exactly the same freedom to peruse publicly available information as anybody else. Frankly, it's terrifying that people like you don't acknowledge that freedom -- that you apparently want some kind of draconian monitoring system put in place to prevent anyone involved in the business of education from freely accessing documents that are openly published on the Internet.
How did the parent get modded flamebait? I mean, what kind of retard...? Well, I guess the GP poster isn't the only one in need of psychiatric help.
I can use my personal account on a forum to do research on behalf of my employer -- and I routinely do. Have I done something wrong? Of course not. Many employers will pay for their employees to have their own, individual accounts on forums and websites relevant to their work.
Nearly every university and college in the English speaking world has groups on Facebook. My own college, a tiny little community college of less than a thousand students, is well represented on Youtube and Facebook.When I searched for "Douglas College" on Youtube, 19 out of the 20 of the results on the first page were about my school. I didn't bother to check the second page, so there are almost certainly a lot more. If I were in a University administrator, I'd be a bit curious about them, and I'd be doing nothing wrong if I checked them out.
When I search for "Douglas College" on Facebook, I got three students (including my most recent ex), an employee, an application that allows the user to search the school's library, three groups, and an event... all just on the first page of results. Are you honestly stupid enough to believe that University administrators are morally obligated to remain ignorant of all of that?!
Correction: to see what they're writing about the school, which is completely different. It's no different than checking the newspaper, to see what the paper's journalists have been writing about the school. Schools should be VERY interested in anything that's published about them.No shit. What YOU'VE been claiming is that it should be illegal for Universities to collect that feedback in the first place. What the grownups have been saying is that the University shouldn't have reacted the way it did. You just can't see past your foaming rage and hatred towards education. Even if education is free (as it should be), a university is a business. A state-run business, perhaps, but a business nonetheless. They have clients, budgets, revenue streams, marketing, public relations, stakeholders, and so on -- all the things that businesses have. Just look at the science department of any university with a decent research program; they almost invariably have patents on technologies that they develop for their research, and they license those patents to other businesses (including other universities) to produce revenue. They hire and fire people, they deal with unions, they try to recruit the best employees and students, and so on. They are, in every sense imaginable, businesses. In fact, most of them are corporations with charters, and the government typically owns them with limited liability. I don't just mean in the US either -- here in Canada and throughout much of Europe, it's the same way.Plenty of righteous indignition, but no insight to the conversation