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."

Comments

Good. Deserved.

[Manip]

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.

Also, this story has nothing to do with Facebook and really doesn't belong on /.

Re:Good. Deserved.

[Anonymous Coward]

Levelling 'paedophile' against a teacher is insanely damaging. They work with kids. As soon as the accusation is made it doesn't matter whether it's true or not. The media latches on to child abuse cases like leeches and while they'll say 'alleged' a lot you can guarantee the public won't think much of that teacher afterwards.

Re:Good. Deserved.

[91degrees]

They're at an age where they really need to learn that you can't throw around the pedophile accusation.

Re:Good. Deserved.

[Luckyo]

Freedom of speech is about being allowed to say "pedophiles should be hanged".

False testimony/libel is saying "mr. teacher x is a pedophile".

Former is legal. Latter is not. Do not mix one with the other. Location the libel is irrelevant - internet is governed by same laws as everything else.

Re:Good. Deserved.

[Kijori]

This isn't a free speech issue and it isn't a threat to posters on Slashdot. It's a centuries-old rule being enforced in a way that accords entirely with common sense: making false allegations of extremely serious crimes can completely destroy a person's career and life, especially when it's an allegation of pedophilia against a teacher. Teachers have been murdered or committed suicide over exactly these sorts of allegations. The ability to spread malicious falsehoods about people is not a protected category of free speech; it is in fact a type of speech that has been prohibited for centuries.

I really can't imagine it will surprise anyone to find that they are not allowed maliciously to claim that their coworkers are guilty of exceptionally serious criminal conduct. Not only has it been in every employment manual I've ever had it's also actionable at law without any employment manual being necessary. And even if it were not, does anyone seriously expect to be able to claim that their boss is a pedophile? The idea is ridiculous.

Legal precedent with a profound and rippling effect? This is a violation of a school's code of conduct, it will almost certainly be settled out of court and even if it goes to court it will be decided at the lowest level and create absolutely no precedent with no effect whatsoever. Even if it did go to the supreme court the only way the ruling could be in any way surprising would be if they did not hold a person responsible for malicious defamation.

Re:Good. Deserved.

[Idarubicin]

...our ability to exercise free speech.

Your ability to exercise free speech does not absolve you of responsibility for the content and consequences of that speech.

Calling an innocent teacher a "pedophile" and a "rapist" - which is what these kids did - is the educational world's equivalent of shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater. Spuriously accusing someone else of any crime is bad enough; falsely accusing someone of being a child molester is beyond the pale; leveling such an accusation at a teacher - who would tend to face immediate suspension during any investigation, followed by dismissal and blacklisting, not to mention torches and pitchforks - is appalling behavior. Many jurisdictions have zero-tolerance, zero-discretion policies for responding to these types of claims, and school board officials have no choice about whether or not to investigate and take immediate action.

It might frighten you to discover a similar anti-defamation policy buried deep on page 174 of your employee manual that you never knew about, or perhaps it will be an amendment to said manual next month because of this.

For the reasons I mention above, there's no need to mention these things in the school's rules for these actions to be punishable. If anything, I suspect it's in there to try to protect the students and manage expectations -- if they get an explicit reminder that this type of defamation has serious consequences, they might be less likely to go ahead and do it without thinking.

By the same token, if your coworker falsely accused a manager of raping one or more of his subordinates, how well do you think that would go over? Would your HR department shrug it off as a bit of harmless fun if it was just because "I was mad that day because of what he [did]" (in the words of one of our students). To take a less emotionally-charged crime, if someone accused the company accountant of embezzling funds, would that be okay? Really? Is there so little maturity and sense of personal responsibility that every company now needs to add "You shouldn't baselessly accuse your coworkers of serious criminal acts" to their handbooks?

Parents need to remind their children that the Internet isn't some special place unattached to reality. That glowing box connects you to real computers operated by real, physical people in real, ordinary places on the physical planet Earth. Actions taken on the internet have repercussions offline, and vice versa. Defamatory statements are not magically protected just because they appear on 'teh internets'. Disappointingly, it seems that certain Slashdot posters are also unaware of this reality.

makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

'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.

The beginning of the end...

[geekmux]

"...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.

Re:question

[TheRaven64]

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.

Re:They are going to have to pass a law

[mangu]

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.

Re:They are going to have to pass a law

[BizzyM]

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.

Re:They are going to have to pass a law

[ComputerGeek01]

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.

Re:Interesting response

[FlatEric521]

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.

Re:Interesting response

[drosboro]

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).