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!

[argent]

Perhaps the court of public opinion can lend a hand.

Re:VTech just kicked in, yo!

[Xaositecte]

Nah, given the circumstances, he'd be able to file a lawsuit, and be taken seriously enough for the college to settle out of court. It should be pretty simple to factor in reinstatement to the college (or enough $$$ in damages that he'll be able to comfortably finish up at another college without taking out student loans).

Re:VTech just kicked in, yo!

[Mike89]

Sorry to comment jack, but this happened to me too. Well, similar - I wrote a blog showing my annoyance at the school, primarily for the pathetic toilet facilities (which cost like $180, 000 to upgrade, with no improvement..), and that the disabled parking spot was turned into a Principal's parking spot.. I was called in two days later, told to clear out my locker and not come back. This was a month and a half before my final exams - which I was told I could sit elsewhere. (This is in Australia, by the way).

Re:VTech just kicked in, yo!

[Sique]

He should even get them for false advertising. They surely mention good English courses somewhere in their advertisement material, and they weren't even able to read "shoot it" correctly in the context of photography.

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!

[cashman73]

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.

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!

[idiotnot]

Settling is the last thing he should do. A settlement, while providing for him, does nothing to fix the mess that higher education has become, all hidden behind federal law. A public court case, however......

Sunlight is the thing colleges fear the most, because it will show them to be gulags where freedom is only a faint notion.

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!

[LeafOnTheWind]

Just to note, Americans were not "twisting" the meaning of college when they used it for the original colleges - they used it exactly as they meant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College#The_origin_of_the_U.S._usage
Also, American English is closer to original Shakespearean usage:

In some ways, American English is more like the English of Shakespeare than modern British English is. Some expressions that the British call "Americanisms" are in fact original British expressions that were preserved in the colonies while lost for a time in Britain (for example trash for rubbish, loan as a verb instead of lend, and fall for autumn; another example, frame-up, was re-imported into Britain through Hollywood gangster movies).
It's you guys that screwed up our beautiful language ;)

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".

Maybe, maybe not

[PopeRatzo]

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.)

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[The Second Horseman]

It's likely to be reversed. It's a state school, so they have an additional legal obligation to not violate free speech and due process rules. Even with a private school, if they don't follow their written judicial procedures to the letter, they'll often lose. Schools like to tell students and their parents not to retain lawyers during internal judicial / discipline proceedings, saying it makes the process "adversarial". They're trying to kick you out or impose some other sanction. It's hard to imagine it getting any more adversarial than that.

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[rjh]

It's a state university. That means they're bound by the Constitution and cannot expel students without affording them due process.

Had this been a private school, he would have had utterly no recourse: expulsion at will for any reason, even none at all, is one of the perks (if you're an administrator) of being at a private school.

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[DavidShor]

Not true. At least according to the Supreme Court, the 14th amendment insures that states are bound by nearly all of the constitution just as strongly as the federal government.

Not only that, but the university most likely receives an enormous amount of federal funds.

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[rjh]

Please learn how the Constitution is construed before you attempt to argue it.

If I'm shouting condemnation against George Bush, Bush has absolutely no right to suppress me. But you're entirely within rights to yell at me "either shut up or get off my lawn!"

The Bill of Rights is a prohibition on what the government or its functionaries may do. It has absolutely nothing to say about what private citizens or groups can do.

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: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

Streisand effect

[saibot834]

Ever heard of the Streisand effect?

Re:Streisand effect

[Naughty Bob]

The Streisand effect is such a useful concept. I think there's a good chance that future generations will primarily know Babs herself via the eponymous linguistic device, rather than her artistic oeuvre. A kind of Metastreisand effect. Hooray.

Re:Streisand effect

[Naughty Bob]

(In fact I believe only Robert Smith can prevent this....)

Public University

[mwilliamson]

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.

Re:Public University

[Wellspring]

The appropriate group would more likely be the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)-- and sure enough, looking at their site, they already have picked it up. But the ACLU might get interested, too. If you go through the site, you'll see other similar cases. Most are political, but a few are exactly the same: student criticizes university, university bullies student into submission with non-judicial processes.

The next link down on the site is a good example. An student took some courses at a community college, and ended up with a shitty professor. When he dropped the class, he emailed his classmates and asked if any wanted to take the course with him at another school. So the college charged him with "hazing, disorderly conduct, breach of the peace, and failure to comply with directions of a college official". The first he heard of it was when he was notified that he'd been found guilty. When he tried to appeal, he found out that appeals are reviewed by the same staffer who makes the rulings in the first place. Later, when FIRE came to his defense and it became a national story, the college dropped the charges, then quietly reinstated them based on brand new accusations of disruptions in class-- charges much harder for him to defend himself against because then it's a he-said, she-said situation.

Colleges do this kind of stuff all the time. Even their so-called "judicial" processes are designed to look good on paper but completely betray the principles they teach in class.

Many years ago, I served with the student judicial committee in the university I was at at the time. They regularly practiced all kinds of shenanigans; their favorite trick was to have an administrator come in after we'd gone into deliberations to present new evidence that only we would know about and that the accused wasn't even aware of. I never said a word about it at the time because it just didn't occur to me how unfair the system was. Since then, I've become deeply ashamed at my lack of judgment. The student chairman, who played along with the administration's tactics as well, went on to become a researcher specializing in civil liberties.

Sleep well....

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:Public University

[Mr. Slippery]

the ACLU doesn't usually pick up the kinds of cases that FIRE is interested in, because the cases often involve public academic institutions suppressing religious speech and conservative political speech.

The ACLU often comes to the defense of religious expression and of conservative political speech.

(Academic institutions in general tend to carry a liberal bias in their administration and faculty, which makes it more likely that conservatives will run afoul of such bias.)

This idea of academic political bias is based on deliberately slanted "research", from the sort of priviledged conservatives who, for some bizarre reason, like to view themselves as a persecuted minority. (I suppose it has its roots in the sort of twisted, martyrdom-centered Christianity they tend to practice.)

But even though most of the far right's whining about "liberal bias" in education is based on restricting their surveys of academics' party affiliations to the women's studies department, perhaps there is an inherent bias. After all, academic institutions tend to carry a bias toward knowledge, while the contemporary conservative movement continually allies itself with ignorance.

Re:Public University

[Mr. Slippery]

Your "theory" is completely refuted by the actions at Duke University during the Lacrosse hoax.

First, the idea that one incident refutes or proves anything about trends in bias is ridiculous. Second, what actions? A bunch of people did a bunch of stuff during that farce. The primary enablers of the hoaxer were Nifong and the Durham Police Department, who were not affiliated with the university. And I note that DAs and cops are not known for liberal bias.

Re:Public University

[sexconker]

Good for you, but what I saw was students actually claiming that the religious people had no right to be there, to say what they were saying, etc. These are the same students who protest when the military's ROTC officers try to come to campus, or when any defense/biomedical company shows up for a career fair.

"Being open minded, tolerant, and free thinking in no way implies an obligation to not respond to stupid, close-minded, or intolerant expression."

The stupid, closed minded, intolerant expression, from what I saw, was all coming from the students.
You could say it was a bit of the pot calling the kettle black, but from what I saw, the religious "nuts" were the sane, open minded, calm, tolerant ones, and the liberal students were filled with venom and spite. They were incensed that the religious nuts even existed, let alone were on campus.

don't believe anything you read in online profiles

[wikinerd]

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.

Airport security

[smaugy]

Steadicam operator to airport security personnel:

"We're here to shoot a pilot."

Hilarity ensues.

Re:Airport security

[vodevil]

Maybe I'm missing something, but the "Shoot it, upload it, get famous" piece sounds more like an advertisement on the page. Why would they punish somebody for that?

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

Re:Airport security

[rizzo420]

they're stretching... that's why.

the second i read that i knew what it meant (considering it was called "project spotlight"). if a university president can't understand that it means take a picture with a camera, then he probably doesn't deserve his position to begin with.

the president wanted to shut this kid up. gave the false notion that he would go to therapy and when approved be allowed back in. when the kid went through therapy with flying colors and didn't shut up about the parking garages, the president did a 180 and wouldn't allow the student back.

what the kid should really be looking into is the school's counselor who violated their professional obligation to not share information about their clients except in extenuating circumstances (such as the client admitting to murder). however, fearing for his/her job when the president met with him/her, i'm sure he/she just crumbled under pressure and said whatever the president wanted to hear.

Here's a threat

[pdhenry]

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.

Re:Here's a threat

[betterunixthanunix]

That's a very big stretch. That statement could be read in another, more likely and more innocuous way, that the president of the university wanted the garage named for him (I guess there weren't any other buildings left). It hardly seems to be a threat, and you would need counseling yourself if you started walking around with plain-clothed policemen because you thought that the collage was a threatening document. The threat was to this president's plan to build the garage, and so he just found a clever way to rid himself of that "problem."

Re:Here's a threat

[spiritraveller]

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 could be. But it's more likely a reference to the fact that the University President was on his way to retire and was using funds from student fees to build the Parking Garage.

After all, "Zaccari Memorial Parking Garage" has a certain ironic ring to it. As if the University President really thinks that in a hundred years, he will be remembered for a parking garage. It's the sort of thing that if I were a student there and immersed in this issue when seeing that sign, I would probably laugh and think "what a fool Zaccari is."

When a communication has several plausible innocent meanings, it hardly presents the threat of a clear and present danger just because someone chose to take it out of context and give it the threatening meaning. Based on TFA, Zaccari pointed to a couple things from an online profile (one of which was a mere advertisement placed there by Facebook). Who among us could not be characterized in an unfair way similarly to the way this student was characterized?

Re:Here's a threat

[Hope Thelps]

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. 1. That's pretty weak.

2. If you really think someone is making death threats, you don't send them a letter expelling them ("that'll stop him killing me!"). You call the police.

It's pretty obvious that the university officials are being disingenuous here. I'm quite happy to assume stupidity rather than malice in most cases but there are limits.

Re:Here's a threat

[UbuntuDupe]

Well, this may be of interest: At work one time, to two coworkers born ~1955, I jokingly referenced a "Bob Memorial Golf Course", where Bob was one of the two, the joke being that Bob would have a lot of money to fund those things. The both immediately assumed I was joking about Bob's death.

This suggests to me there's a generational difference in the connotation of "memorial".

Re:Here's a threat

[schon]

something that merely can be construed as a threat is not a threat Try telling that to the city of Boston. :)

Shooting shootings as a pretext...

[betterunixthanunix]

School shootings seem to be used as a pretext for schools to accomplish their non-academic goals these days. At my university, for example, the dining halls recently received several large, flat panel TV's each, which provide us with vital information about the price of food and upcoming "dining hall events" (food that isn't normally served but is just as bad). When I noted to a friend that this all seemed like a waste of electricity, especially since we have a coal-fired power plant right on campus, one of the dining hall supervisors overheard me and said, "Yeah, but these can also be used as an emergency communications system, ..." and went on to talk about how students need to be informed.

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.

Fire the President

[Detritus]

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.

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.

University Contact Information

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:University Contact Information

[Mike89]

For your well reasoned & thought out responses.

*laughs at the thought of their inbox*. Oh god, now I have to find that Pennyarcade comic.. here we go

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

Making an Example.

[headkase]

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".

More fuel for the fire

[Nazlfrag]

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.

Re:More fuel for the fire

[RealGrouchy]

Well, if students were to start thinking independently and having opinions, it would get in the way of their Education.

- RG>

I don't even understand the V tech reason here..

[stormguard2099]

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.

What's really interesting

[Mike1024]

From the article:

"Knowing that Barnes had availed himself of counseling services made available to all students by VSU, Zaccari secretly and repeatedly met with Barnes's counselor seeking to justify his decision to expel him," the lawsuit states. "What he learned from both the campus counseling center and from Barnes's private psychiatrist who was consulted in the matter, however, was that Barnes had never exhibited any violent tendencies

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.

Re:What's really interesting

[RealGrouchy]

On the bright side, at least Zaccari is speaking to a counsellor (even if it his not his own). He evidently needs one.

- RG>

Re:What's really interesting

[absurdist]

I went through a somewhat similar situation while working for an agency of the State of California. Morale was in the toilet due to management being exactly the kind of clueless, pompous buffoons that management so typically is. So they brought in a psychiatrist and set up mandatory meetings for every department. At the first meeting he made a very big show of assuring everyone that this was all confidential and he was bound by law and professional ethics not to divulge anything said in these sessions to anyone. When I brought up immediately that the state Supreme Court had recently ruled that, contrary to his assertions, whoever was PAYING for the service was considered to be the client, and therefore entitled to have the information divulged to them, and that his misleading statements really didn't reflect well on his professional ethics, he tried to deflect it in every possible way... WITHOUT actually denying it. The point was made, however. The sessions were abruptly ended about a month later when it became clear that no one was talking to him. The bottom line is that the Doctor - Patient relationship isn't nearly as sacrosanct as people make it out to be.

No denial

[Per Abrahamsen]

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.

BTW: the IT department wasraided...

[tmk]

...after they published a FAQ on "troubleshooting".

Media War

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Anyone missing the big picture?

[whoda]

What about the rest of the students who weren't expelled and are being educated by these idiots? That's the real story.

This kind of thing happens at lots of schools.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Privacy??

[EaglemanBSA]

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.

Re:online identity

[Hognoxious]

I think what you're proposing already exists. It's called "China".

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:Facebook or Foolbook?

[Khakionion]

The only "foolish" part of it is that these people haven't taken the time to mess with the privacy settings on their fucking profiles. Photos, Notes, even your basic profile can have their visibility changed to various classes of user. If you're doing something questionable, but still want that media shared, learn to protect your content.

However, this particular case at Valdosta is irrelevant and ridiculous, seeing as the content was totally innocuous.

Well...

[Corwn of Amber]

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.

Re:Well...

[Robber Baron]

Some universities employ complete morons who can't even read. So please enlighten me as to how being expelled from such a place is a bad thing.

Re:Well...

[spun]

Probably not, but there are reasons why we have these sayings about black kettles and glass houses... People in glass houses shouldn't throw black kettles?

What is the effect on others ?

[Alain Williams]

There has been a lot of comment about the effect on the student, what the university should have done, .... but just think what effect this will have on the other students who are looking at this fiasco. They will say to themselves: "Oh, shit - I had better not say anything that might not be liked by those who have power over me because I might be penalised!". This mindset is likely to last the rest of their lives.

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.

Post-Virginia Tech world

[Nimey]

I move that whomever uses /that/ phrase be summarily shot.

Too far?

[loraksus]

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".

In a post-[Event X] world...

[One Childish N00b]

In a post-[Event X] world, have needless appeals to emotion gone too far?

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 /. user - I thought we were supposed to be more informed and enlightened than knee-jerking idiots?

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.

Yet again, the kids loose because of the idiots

[Doug52392]

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.

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:Now that's well thought out plan...

[russotto]

It should be interesting to see what the setllement amount is going to be.

Hopefully it will include a lifetime parking spot at the T. Hayden Barnes parking garage.

Important facts missing from summary

[Jay L]

1. Valdosta State is in Georgia.
2. Georgia borders both Alabama and Florida.

This should help to explain things a little better.

Cool.

[Vegeta99]

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.

Fuck em. Noise violation? Maybe they meant that they were raising the noise /floor/ by adding junk to the system =)

The democratization of the double-life.

[Lemmy Caution]

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.

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.

This is extremely fishy.

[superdude72]

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.

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.

Didn't we have a revolution to kick you guys out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, great, another condescending Brit.

... 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).

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.....

The home of Cockney rhyming slang is accusing *us* of being confusing? What cheek.

Would you like chips with that?

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

[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

Yes, there's bias. Don't make a big deal out of it

[cappadocius]

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.

So Web 2.0...?

[argent]

So Web 2.0 is Usenet 1.0?

Some countries...

[argent]

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. ...