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?"

Comments

VTech just kicked in, yo!

[soupforare]

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.

Re:VTech just kicked in, yo!

[quarrel]

Which Australian Uni was this?

Almost all Uni's in Australia are government funded, and an attitude to free speech that is at least not as bad as that. I've taught at one of the Top-8 Uni's for quite a while (and was a student for more years than I care to remember), and find your story very hard to believe. You're way past the HECS census date (not that that should count for much over something so trivial), and they kick you out for criticising the toilets? Talk to your student union (what's left of them these days) and/or a lawyer.

--Q

Re:VTech just kicked in, yo!

[moosesocks]

Hate to point this out, but I don't think we're talking about another university here,... the fact that he referred to "Principal" and "locker" should indicate that he's talking about a high school. The rules do tend to be different between high school and college; for one, high school students are generally minors, having not reached the age of 18; most college students are adults, with full legal rights.

Not quite. There's a bit of a language gap here, so bear with me:
1) The sort of higher-education institution one attends between the ages of ~18 and ~21 is referred to as a "University" everywhere on the planet apart from the US, where a "College" is where one studies toward an undergraduate degree. Most US "Colleges" are also referred to as "Universities" because they also grant Post-Graduate degrees (also referred to as "graduate degrees" in the US, although you can easily see why this phrase is redundant and ambiguous).

2) "College" in the UK most typically refers to a school attended between the ages of 16 and 18 to prepare/qualify students for study at a university, typically by taking A-Levels (similar to AP in the US, but a bit more sane). The UK's structure of what Americans refer to "High School" can be complicated, varies by geographic locale, although this term generally holds true. "Honors" programs at American High Schools that take place in the Junior/Senior years are somewhat comparable. Much of this terminology has crossed over into Australia, and many private 4-year "High Schools" call themselves colleges. Professional/vocational schools are also typically referred to as a "college," which is somewhat consistent with US usage.

3) To add to the confusion, some smaller tertiary schools in Australia do call themselves colleges. This most likely arises from the original definition of the word "college" as "a group of colleagues". The US's beloved Electoral College is an example of this. Likewise, old large Universities in the UK such as Oxford, St Andrews, and Cambridge are subdivided into smaller "colleges". Much of the Ivy League has adopted a similar system in the hopes of appearing authentic.

4) Generally speaking, the head of any educational institution in the UK is referred to as the "Principal", including both Universities, and primary and secondary schools. This term applies in virtually all of the Commonwealth countries (ie. all of the former British colonies apart from the US)

5) Virtually all universities in the UK and Australia are publicly funded (as they should be!). They are not necessarily under direct governmental oversight, but would almost certainly be subject to large monetary penalties for such an egregious violation of the law.

6) "Legal Adulthood" is not granted at the age of 18 around the world, as you would imply it is. It's not even defined at the age of 18 in the US, and falls under state jurisdiction. Although the age *is* 18 in Australia, England, and Wales, it's 16 in Scotland. In the US, various states have passed legislation to restrict the legal rights of its citizens by either raising the age to 19, 21, or making legal adulthood contingent upon graduating High School. This article on the subject should be enlightening.

Hope that clears up any confusion floating around..... silly Americans for tweaking their language and measurement systems to make them incompatible with the rest of the English-speaking world.....

Would you like chips with that?

Re:VTech just kicked in, yo!

[digitrev]

Just to add something else, in Canada, it's similar to the US, but not quite. And it also depends on where in the country you are. But I can tell you what it's like in Ontario.

First off, there's kindergarten, which can be taken at the age of 4, and usually has to be taken when you're 5. Then elementary school starts at grade 1 when a kid is 6 (so long as he's six by the end of the year, not the school year). This goes up to grade 6. Then there's a kind of junior high in grades 7 and 8. Then high school from grades 9 to 12. However, at the elementary and high school levels, there are two school systems: the public board and the Catholic board, both of which are publicly funded. In either case, the head of the school is called the Principal.

Then there's post-secondary education. Aside from vocational schools, we have both colleges and universities. Colleges are generally considered more applied, and you enroll in programs with a very small selection as to what courses you get to take. You need certain college level prerequisites in high school to enroll in college. We also have universities, which are considered more academic, and depending on your program, you can take a very large selection of courses. You need certain university level prerequisites in high school to enroll in university. This line is sometimes blurred, with universities having colleges, but for the most part, this is true.

And that doesn't even explain Quebec.

Re:VTech just kicked in, yo!

[belmolis]

As a further complication, here in BC we have "university-colleges". These are colleges that have been upgraded to offer 4-year degrees under the aegis of a full university. They differ from universities in that they don't have their own charter as universities.

Re:VTech just kicked in, yo!

[thbarnes]

Unfortunately, I'm already having to take out student loans to attend another University.

See the complaint: http://students.kennesaw.edu/~tbarne18/barnescomplaint.pdf

Re:VTech just kicked in, yo!

[TimedArt]

---Quote:--
1) The sort of higher-education institution one attends between the ages of ~18 and ~21 is referred to as a "University" everywhere on the planet apart from the US, where a "College" is where one studies toward an undergraduate degree. Most US "Colleges" are also referred to as "Universities" because they also grant Post-Graduate degrees (also referred to as "graduate degrees" in the US, although you can easily see why this phrase is redundant and ambiguous).
---End Quote---

Not a huge point, but in the US of A "college" usually refer to smaller schools, which may or may not have graduate (aka "post-graduate") students. Universities on the other hand, are never small and are made up of several "colleges" which operate with some degree of independence. For example, Dartmouth *College* has both undergrads (aged ~18 to ~21) and graduate students, but is relatively small. New York *University* also has both undergrads and graduate students, but within NYU is the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Dentistry, the College of Nursing, and a bunch of other schools/colleges.

Re:VTech just kicked in, yo!

[wiredlogic]

The situation in the US isn't quite what you describe. While it is true that "college" is often used as a synonym for "university" that isn't always the case. A university is a union of multiple colleges. When you enroll, you join one of the colleges. It isn't far from the truth for a university student to describe themselves as going to college. Also, some smaller schools have a singular focus to the curriculum and consist of a single college or are labeled a technical institute. "University" is not an appropriate appellation for these schools, "college" is.

Re:VTech just kicked in, yo!

[leenks]

4) Generally speaking, the head of any educational institution in the UK is referred to as the "Principal", including both Universities, and primary and secondary schools. This term applies in virtually all of the Commonwealth countries (ie. all of the former British colonies apart from the US)

The head of primary and secondary schools in the UK is known as the "head teacher", commonly shortened to "head". I have yet to hear the term "principal" here - having been through a number of UK schools myself, worked in a number of schools, having teaching parents, and an ex-headteacher Godmother. Many of my colleagues have wives that are deputy/head teachers - I've yet to hear them refer to their wives as "the principal".

Re:Fire the President

[ConanG]

The article mentions the President retired (or will retire) six-months before he planned to. No way to know if this incident had anything to do with it though.

Re:Airport security

[PatrickThomson]

here in the UK employees are usually pretty well protected but some companies have a scummy arrangement where where all the employees are actually contracted from a small temping organisation that only serves that particular company. Thus, the company can "fire" whoever they want whenever they want by just going "we don't want to offer you any more shifts" and the person is SOL.

An incident I'll never forget is when someone was in front of me for an interview with company X, talking to the receptionist about why their swipecard didn't work. It turns out, they were talking to a taxman or something and gave thier job description as "packing in factory", i.e. putting things in boxes*. Now, here in the uk, to "pack something in" means to quit, so that could at a stretch be interpreted as "I'm going to quit my job".
The taxman happened to know the HR person at company X, called them up, said the guy was quitting, and they just wiped him off the system. The exchange with him went something like "we can't offer you any more shifts, you're unreliable" based on total BS. Because it was easier to hire someone else, they just told him to get lost! Needless, I decided that putting sandwiches in boxes wasn't a career that would benefit me and went on to become a reseach scientist instead.

* no, it wasn't a fudge factory, you sick bastard

Facebook or Foolbook?

[Organic Brain Damage]

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.

Re:Way too far

[danzona]

It's Valdosta State. They are already on the bottom peg.

If anyone is interested in avoiding schools that trample on student's rights to free speech, there is a watchdog group that maintains a list of such institutions. http://www.thefire.org/

Re:Public University

[six11]

From the parent:

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.

It seems that Valdosta State does have an understanding of free speech, though.

From the article:

FIRE is simultaneously pressuring Valdosta State to reverse its "free speech area" policy, which is unusually rigid in restricting student expression to a single stage on the 168-acre campus, only between the hours of 12 and 1 p.m. and 5 and 6 p.m., with prior registration.

Truly, an enlightened institution.

Re:The democratization of the double-life.

[crashfrog]

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.

Sure, and that would be justified if this was a case of that, but it's not. The kid wasn't even expelled because of anything on his profile. He was expelled because an ad that Facebook displayed with his profile, without the kid's knowledge or permission, had the word "shoot" in it, because it was an ad for a photography website, and some supercilious paperpushing pissant saw a tenuous excuse to discredit, slander, and expel a student who had drawn attention to his financial malfeasance.

If it hadn't been Facebook, it would have been something else. This was about people in power bullying the powerless to avoid oversight of their actions. They would have made something up either way.

It doesn't have anything to do with self-expression or pictures of pot smoking on Facebook. It has everything to do with asshole bureaucrats manufacturing fictitious "threats" to discredit obstacles to power.

Wrong

[svunt]

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.

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[moosesocks]

I was never making that argument.

However, private citizens/groups aren't allowed to skirt the laws by printing a statement to that effect in a handbook, similar to the manner in which EULA tend not to hold up in court, even though "the customer agreed to it".

If the contract for your job states "we can fire you for any reason", and you're fired on the grounds of race or gender, the company would most likely be found guilty in a wrongful termination lawsuit.

In terms of free speech, things start to get hazy when it comes to private organizations, and very likely relies upon state laws, or the manner in which the university is funded. However, since the university in question is run by the state, they're directly violating the constitution.

Re:University Contact Information

[thbarnes]

The University System of Georgia Board of Regents is meeting on Wednesday and Thursday. After backing out of a hearing procedure which they established to give an opportunity for due process, we filled a civil rights and discrimination lawsuit in Federal court.

It may be more effective to contact the Board of Regents at this point.

Office of the Chancellor
Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia
Suite 7025
270 Washington Street, SW
Atlanta, GA 30334
office: (404) 656-2202
fax: (404) 657-6979
email: chancellor@usg.edu

http://www.usg.edu/contact/
http://www.usg.edu/regents/members/

Join my Facebook group @ http://kennesaw.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6371166090

The story about the lawsuit has been heard across Georgia. Newspapers from Valdosta, Augusta, and Athens are reporting on the case. It's been discussed on television, radio, and Internet blogs. Prominent education journal "Inside Higher Ed" featured it on their front page.

http://mashable.com/2008/01/13/facebook-users-photo-led-to-expulsion-from-university/
http://www.splc.org/newsflash.asp?id=1664
http://www.courthousenews.com/2008/01/10/Valdosta_State_Student_Says_Facebook_Opinion_Resulted_in_Expulsion_From_School.htm
http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/011208/news_20080112030.shtml
http://www.valdostadailytimes.com/local/local_story_011142725.html
http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/8794.html
http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/8796.html
http://www.walb.com/Global/story.asp?S=7612384

Relevant Case Law

[thbarnes]

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

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[thbarnes]

I have never found a definition of "administrative withdrawal" in any University or Board of Regents document nor has anyone explained how I violated Board of Regents Policy 1902. http://www.usg.edu/regents/policymanual/1900.phtml

The University administration violated all established University and Board of Regents policies regarding disciplinary issues and policy on evaluation of potentially emotionally distressed students.

http://www.valdosta.edu/judicial/AppealsProcess.shtml
http://www.valdosta.edu/judicial/ConductViolations.shtml
http://www.valdosta.edu/judicial/RightsofStudent.shtml
http://www.valdosta.edu/judicial/HearingProcedure.shtml
http://www.valdosta.edu/judicial/OtherIssues.shtml

Hayden

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[thbarnes]

It's called the 14th amendment to the US Constitution, bud.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution