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Students Suspended, Expelled Over Facebook Posts
An anonymous reader writes "Two students have been suspended, and one student has been expelled, over negative Facebook postings they made about a teacher. The individuals are in seventh grade at Chapel Hill Middle School, meaning they are either 12 or 13 years old, according. The children are accused of violating a portion of the school code that is a "level one" offense, the worst possible: 'Falsifying, misrepresenting, omitting, or erroneously reporting' allegations of inappropriate behavior by a school employee toward a student."
Called someone a "pedophile" in this age of crazy parents, vigilantism, and indefinite search engine indexing they deserve at least to be expelled. Such accusations could very easily result in that teacher losing their job or worse having some moron fire bombing their home. It is exactly this kind of thing which is driving male teachers out of education in droves.
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Also, this story has nothing to do with Facebook and really doesn't belong on
'Falsifying, misrepresenting, omitting, or erroneously reporting' allegations of inappropriate behavior by a school employee toward a student."
This is a SERIOUS offense. For a student doing this to a teacher, it's no wonder he's expelled. If an adult falsifies or erroneously reports serious allegations like that, it's a felony! I'd say the kids should go to juvenile detention if they lied and said a teacher did serious stuff to kids.
Posting on the internet that someone is a paedophile can have some very serious repercussions even at the wild accusation level. Why is there shock horror at the decision to refuse to allow a pupil that falsely the staff paedophiles to attend?
Against making executive decisions based on Facebook posts. It's getting ridiculous.
What these students did was a jailable offense if only they were old enough. Doing things that would land an adult in jail is a fairly good reason to expel someone.
The posts in TFA are a little worse than that. If your cousin is falsely accusing adults of diddling children, pull her aside and beat her senseless before she ruins someones life.
So irresponsible name-calling because of a low grade or something is now expressing oneself and an example of free speech? Nice.
I hate to be the one to do this but it is in fact already illegal to publish such things about a person and yes the kid should be expelled (and then sent to a boarding school).
Slander/Libel is illegal and in this case you can be sued over it.
Facebook 15 years ago would have been a Bulletin Board at the local arcade/kids hangout.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
This has direct impact not only on the reputation of the guy, but on the school , and the adminstration of the school, principal, etc... So yeah, the school had cause to act, at least check the accusation, and if wrong then at the very least suspend the student , potentially also going into libel lawsuit for the school teacher agaisnt the student.
...remember that there is no violation her if what the kid says is true.
I know, unlikely in this case, but it's something to think about. Seems like a way that "policy" could be used to cover something up since kids are usually assumed wrong at school until they are proven right (at which point the administrator starts to ignore them).
At any rate, in the U.S. we've given school admins the right to pretty much create law by creating a "policy." I am not comfortable with that. It can and has been used as CYA too many times.
Kids, much less adults, understand the repercussions of 'inking' something on the internet. This is why it's so important for their parents to step in and stop them from such things. Yes, kids need censors for some of the stupidity that they perpetrate while they are (gasp) children! That doesn't mean you suspend or expel. You take corrective action, and smack down the parents for not doing their job. Yes, their JOB. Having a child is a JOB. I get so tired of people that try to blame schools and governments for childrens stupidity. If their parents didn't allow it, it wouldn't happen.
On the flip side of this, I think that there is a majority of adults who don't understand the implications of 'inking' something on the 'net, either. The root of the problem isn't even the ink. It's the social contract tat people hold themselves to. Just saying "rape" with someones name connected to it can ruin their life, and that is crappy as hell.
Use what works.
Calling your teacher stupid is fine. It's a subjective judgement. Accusing your teacher of rape is not (unless they actually did it, of course) - it's slander / libel.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Thank you very much. We keep pointing out that there is no difference between doing something and doing something *with a computer*, and now you want to create another law that makes this useless differentiation.
If they had posted fliers with the same content, they would have gotten into trouble too.
I'm 100% on board with the seriousness of this, but not with the schools reaction. It's a matter for the courts, not the principal, unless the posts were done on school grounds with school equipment. And being "forced" to log onto the account while at school? That should be right out. When a libel case comes to court, the suspect has the opportunity to defend themselves; they MAY have reason to believe the person actually IS a pedophile, rapist or suffer from bipolar disorder. Seems unlikely, but you never know - and now we never will.
In the original posting? I mean I was all ready to type up how terrible this was and a school over steping their bounds but then I actually read the article. There's a world of difference between saying things like I hate my teacher or he/she is a moron and he/she is a pedophile.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
First Amendment, blaw, blaw, blaw... These children said these things out of school, it's none of the school's business.
Did you "read" the article? No, of course not.
They made false accusations of serious criminal activity. Is that sort of thing protected by the First Amendment? I'm not a lawyer.
Please get off your soap-box and live in reality. These children's little prank could have had (and possibly still can have) serious life-changing consequences for their falsely accused teachers.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Public school teachers only work/teach half as much as they did 25 years ago.
Who will sue them for STEALING an education from students for their own personal comfort/laziness?
And you think the right punishment for being lazy is being jailed on a false accusation of pedophilia?
Tell that to your boss next times he catches you reading Slashdot at work.
This was a response to the article on zdnet, written by "stevey_d":
Lawyers make every argument adversarial. This is unethical and divides people whereas they should learn to live better with each other.
Children often talk in terms like this about teachers, it's normal. What isn't normal is for the teacher to overhear it (or, if they do, they have the nous to develop bad hearing). This is the same for management in an organization. The only thing here is that the kids didn't figure any adults would intrude on their personal conversation.
The school and the teachers have been ill advised here, someone could have quitely taken the kids to one side, explained the public nature of the chat, and helped them make it hidden or deleted. (enforce privacy).
This whole case is ridiculous. Kids are kids, they don't always know how to behave, they make mistakes. The adults in the situation were clearly not mature enough in their response. Adversarial relationship no, should very rarely have anything to do with school/kids.
While I do agree that what these students said was wrong, I don’t believe they should be punished for what they did. They need to be disciplined, sure, but the school should not have a right to get involved. This is a very fine line we’re talking about.
So somehow discipline is not punishment? Tell that to my Mom when I did something stupid like talking back to her. Soap on the tongue sure felt like punishment to me.
Having read TFA, the issue I find most jarring is that the parents of these children are considering suing the school for their actions. Really? Now that's a grand way to teach children right and wrong. "Gee Johny, you called your teacher a pedophile and got suspended because it was a false claim? Lets sue the bastard instead.". I don't see the argument as being over whether the school had the right or not, the core issue is that kids now feel free enough to use words, to "ink" words like pedophile, rapist, bi-polar as weapons. "Ha, you can't touch me because I am protected". Instead of taking the school to task for taking action to protect their employees, how about we take to task the parents that create children with little to know awareness of basic respect to adults. I may not have liked my English teacher in high school, I certainly may have said to friends, I cannot stand that lady, but had I called her a rapist, my parents would have applauded the school and added further "discipline" to make their "punishment" seem kind.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
Based on what my grandparents told me when I was growing up, 100-150 years ago, teenagers were far more capable than they are today simply because more was expected of them and they were given actual responsibilities. (and there were consequences for failing to fulfill them) If teens acted like they do today back then, they would have been looked at as being childish and feeble-minded. Even as recently as 70-80 years ago, you would have been disgraced as a parent if your kid did most of the "normal" stuff that teens do today. I'm not convinced that our modern culture of extending "childhood" until age 18 is the right thing to do... it certainly didn't happen a century or more ago and more of often than not people were better off for it.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
Even as recently as 10-20 years ago, you would have been disgraced as a parent if your kid did most of the "normal" stuff that teens do today.
FTFY.
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So, you've got a kid lying, saying that an adult licensed to teach and professionally tending to the education and safety of children is mentally ill. This leaves a stain on that person's reputation in their field, and could make it difficult for their career. Or, perhaps the teacher actually is bipolar, but has it well under control through medication, and you've got a kid spreading private medical information online, in an attempt to damage that person. Either way, you're dealing with a kid that has decided it's within his rights to deliberately and publicly try to damage the reputation of a person who makes a living working with kids. The kid was expelled for exhibiting real malice, and showing the willingness to act on it, publicly, to hurt somebody's career. Good riddance.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Previously if you were caught writing such a message on the walls , you would have to erase it and then were suspended for 10 days for the action
You can't possibly be so obtuse as to not recognize the difference between something on a wall that a small number of people might see, and which can be removed, vs. an online posting that can take on a life of its own and become essentially permanent in a venue accessed by billions of people.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Watch the documentary Witch Hunt (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1196112/ , it is on netflix streaming) to see how incredibly destructive these kinds of claims about pedophilia can be, even if the facts in the accusation are completely absurd. (In another case not covered in the movie, very young students claimed that teachers used a system of underground tunnels to get to a secret dungeon, and this was accepted as fact.) Communities can very easily enter into a kind of mass hysteria and put innocent people in prison. Given the history of things that have happened to teachers in this country, the school policy is not unreasonable.
A while ago these students would get the switch, or a spanking, or whatnot, and everyone would have agreed that it was an appropriate punishment. Now we have everyone getting their lawyer. I know on the face of it one could argue that we're teaching them to use the legal system instead of violence... sounds reasonable, but it just seems wrong to me. It all seems so much more, well... juvenile.
OMG, Really?
Sure. Since we do not know the disciplinary history of this involved it may have been the next step in a series of punishments.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Calling people on their failings is fine. But if Obama decided to skip work for a day then someone reported him for being a "seal-killing lobbyist-appeasing-warmonger" then that report would still be wrong, and it would be less then half as serious as what these girls did.
What these kids did wasn't the same as calling someone a jerk or an idiot on a public forum. They accussed him of being a pedophile, probably the worst false accusation you could have leveled against you and if any inquiry were made then it wouldn't matter if he was found guilty or not this teachers career would be over right there and then. This would be like calling someone a communist 60 or 70 years ago.
Even as recently as 70-80 years ago, you would have been disgraced as a parent if your kid did most of the "normal" stuff that teens do today.
Even as recently as 20 years ago, you would have been allowed to discipline them in public. Now some busybody will call the cops if you raise your voice to your child in public or threaten to withhold some privilege.
Facebook 15 years ago would have been a Bulletin Board at the local arcade/kids hangout.
True, but the kids back then would have been smart enough not to sign their post on the bulletin board calling the person a pedophile. It would have been an "anonymous post". These kids were stupid enough to do the equivalent of signing that post on the bulletin board.
I was about to side with the kids on this until I read TFA. They called him a pedophile... screw these kids, expel 'em! 2 things you never throw around lightly: Pedophile & Rape.
If you read the other article, they not only called the teacher a pedophile, but also a rapist and bipolar.
The sort of damage that could do to a teacher's career is unbelievable. And the parents are saying "my children shouldn't be punished so harshly." And threatening to sue the school.
Maybe the parents need to do some parenting. Or get a dose of their own medicine (set up a fake facebook page accusing them of being a pedophile and rapist, and see their reaction).
And maybe a more appropriate punishment is NOT suspending kids, but making them stay LONGER in school. Wash some of the graffiti off the lockers, etc. I could never figure out how suspending a kid was a punishment.
Princpal: "You skipped school yesterday, so we're suspending you today"
Student: "So what you're saying is I have permission to skip school today too? Works for me!"
It this is starting to happen all the time, perhaps all the more reason to start being more strict.
Problem is that these accusations are often taken as truth by the public, despite it being one of the worst things you can call another human being.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
The line is pretty obvious:
NOBODY who is a government employee has any business reading private facebook or emails w/o first obtaining a warrant issued by a judge, and naming the reason for the search, backed by articulatable evidence why said person is a suspect.
Get over yourself. The courts have already held that not only are facebook posts are public, but also that even deleted posts can be turned over. Besides, you agree as part of your terms of use that facebook can reveal all sorts of crap. Don't like it - don't use facebook.
And having at least a dozen other students posting comments shows the posts in question were far from a "private communication" (who knows how many other students viewed the posts w/o commenting).
You are joking right? There is NOTHING private about FaceBook! It's a damned website designed to be viewed, searched, etc. Don't post there if you don't want others to view it. I never did understand this fascination with people posting every drib and drab of their pathetic lives there... And worse, expecting it to be "private" when they have friended everyone under the sun. If you don't want something leaked, then don't post it there plain and simple.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
The sort of damage that could do to a teacher's career is...
Palm trees and 8