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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.
So irresponsible name-calling because of a low grade or something is now expressing oneself and an example of free speech? Nice.
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
"...We’ll definitely be hearing more about this one as Facebook and other social networks continue to grow in popularity."
Grow in popularity? Uh, no, I doubt it. This is yet another nail in the liability coffin that is Facebook.
Not long ago I read how Facebook is being used to decide who should be selected to sit on a jury, with potential jurors being "coherced" into befriending the court in exchange for free wi-fi service in the courtroom, allowing the court to "see all".
Also not long ago, I read how Facebook is responsible for quite an alarming number of cases of infidelity, leading to divorce, with divorce lawyers practically drooling over getting their hands in their opponents juicy Facebook tidbits.
Schools. Potential employers. Current employers. What's next, will Military background investigations be done from an office chair instead of getting out in the field and actually interviewing someone, relying on social network "profiling" instead?
As more and more people realize that social networking is a liability in their lives, they'll realize it's not worth it.
Then again, with the air of ignorance around the law these days, maybe people won't give a shit until they have to hire a lawyer to defend what they've posted. Free speech...isn't free.
Schools don't have jurisdiction over anything - they are not law-enforcing entities. However, when a crime (in this case, libel) is committed against a school or a member of the school staff they may choose to punish the student for the violation of school rules (e.g. one saying 'don't do illegal stuff') and not press charges. Beyond that, the school may punish students in any manner that the parents have agreed to for violation of school rules and may (usually) withdraw its services (i.e. suspend or expel the student) without agreement of the parent.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
What these students did was a jailable offense
Maybe in North Korea or China. In America something like this is at most a civil tort of libel.
Maybe next time they can record audio/video of said allegations. Wouldn't be the 1st time that would show the kids were right on their claims. Then again if it's just audio they could still claim its falsifying the teachers voice or something of those lines of thought.
Furthermore, if it is more than one kid claiming bad behaviour from the teacher part, i believe the chances of being true claims are quite higher.
It's people like you who make the draconian decision by the school necessary.
People's lives have been destroyed by false accusations. Hysterical parents who should never have had children, greedy lawyers, those are worse than pedophiles, because they can cause more harm to more people.
The punishment against a false accusation should be at least as severe as the punishment against the crime itself.
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.
Had the kids posted opinions - IE: "My teacher sucks" - No biggie, and totally protected.
Instead, they posted factual allegations.
"My teacher is a pedo/rapist" is Libel, which is not protected, and clearly actionable.
It also has consequences. Erroneous accusations like that ruin careers, and send people to jail. A few hundred years ago it was "Witch, Witch!" Today it's "Pedo, Pedo!"
If you want to see scary, look at the OP comments - "That teacher should be investigated, the cops should be all over his house!" is the meme there.
Finally, for those saying "not the school's place to get involved." Actually, it is - the school has standing to take unilateral action here in order to protect itself and its employee. Period.These posts were retaliation for official acts. Left unaddressed at the institutional level, it becomes an effective method of blackmail. Yeah, the teacher can sue too, but then you've got the boatload of issues that come with litigation that I for one would never want to entertain. For a deterrent to be effective, it has to be Cost Effective. Cheap harms are best countered by cheap deterrents, otherwise students have an incentive to hedge, and kids are intuitively good at gaming incentive structures. Besides, I can just hear the whining now -
"Teacher sues for being called a pedo on the internet."
Comments:
Litigious bastard, he's probably a pedo.
Why's everybody suing all the time.
etc, etc
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."
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.
I'll assume this is a public school, in which case they don't have any choice but to follow our Constitution, namely the First Amendment.
The first protects your right to free speech, however you are still liable for any consequences of exercising that right. It does not grant you any immunity from being punished for what you said.
These children said these things out of school, it's none of the school's business. If they go snooping and find out, then they can't do anything about it.
They can - schools have the right (and responsibility) to provide a safe working environment for students and staff. If something is said or done off campus hay can certainly take action as a result of what was said.
Bottom line is kids say things about teachers they don't like. They always have and always will. Punishing them for exercising their freedom of speech will only cause further resentment towards the school and teachers which will result in more severe verbal bashing of the institution.
Maybe they'll learn that their free speech rights come with responsibilities as well.
Not surprisingly, the article doesn't mention what the teacher did that may have resulted in this type of reaction from the students.
Yea, it's probably something as horrific as giving them a bad grade because they didn't do their work or separate them in class because they were talking to each other.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
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.
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.
Maybe in North Korea or China. In America something like this is at most a civil tort of libel
It is never safe to generalize about U.S. state law.
Colorado is one of 17 states with a criminal libel statute, which is different from the civil libel laws in all 50 states that allow victims of allegedly defamatory statements to seek compensation from speakers. Criminal libel laws allow the state to fine or imprison speakers of defamatory statements.
Former high school student pleads guilty to criminal libel [2006]
This whole case is ridiculous. Kids are kids, they don't always know how to behave, they make mistakes.
Punishment is an accepted step in teaching children how to behave, last I checked. If the children didn't know right from wrong, that would be one thing. But they were all 12-13 years of age, which should mean they already know that lying about their teacher being a pedo/rapist is wrong. Once you have gotten past the point of knowing right from wrong, we move to the step of teaching the consequences of doing the wrong thing. That is the punishment step. The kids did wrong, they know it, and they were caught. Now they get to face up to the consequences. Hopefully this will teach them further how to behave in the future, since simply knowing right from wrong wasn't enough in this case.
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).
Really? "Kids are kids" is the reason why it's okay for one to accuse a teacher of being a pedophile? Really?
I overhear (and see) a lot of student conversations. "Mr. So-and-so is a loser" isn't that uncommon. "I hate Mrs. X" happens fairly regularly. But "Mr. Y is a pedophile" is and should be in a whole different category (e.g. a criminal one).
The sort of damage that could do to a teacher's career is...
Palm trees and 8
You're taking that bit of dicta from Tinker v. Des Moines completely out of context. The phrase "in class" is a reference to the classroom as opposed to the larger school campus, not a reference to at the school rather than completely off the grounds of the school. Here's the whole paragraph: