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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?"
Perhaps the court of public opinion can lend a hand.
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.
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
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.
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
(In fact I believe only Robert Smith can prevent this....)
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
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 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.
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).
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 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.
I move that whomever uses /that/ phrase be summarily shot.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
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.
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....
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?
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
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