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School District Sued By ACLU Over Student's Free Speech Rights
An anonymous reader writes "The ACLU is suing Minnewaska Area Schools and Pope County, according to this article in the StarTribune. At issue: school administrators and a sheriff's deputy forced a girl to hand over login information to her Facebook and email accounts, after she posted on Facebook that she 'hated' a school hall monitor who had been 'mean' to her, and cursed in a separate Facebook comment because someone reported her. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and an order that would restrain school officials from attempts to regulate or discipline students based on speech made outside of school hours and off school property."
I mean, what in the world are the school administrators thinking? That parents are not going to care if they force their daughter to give them their log in information to their personal accounts?
Everyone that thought it was a good idea to try and extract passwords from the girl should be fired and permanently banned from taking any tax payer money, for the rest of their lives. The people that hired them, should be fired and banned for 3 years. I bet, in a very short order, we could put an end to this foolishness.
Sometimes the ACLU's actions make me roll my eyes, but on this one, they're right. Seems to me the school's personnel took their petty authority way too far. Off school property, on a website not controlled by the school. GET 'EM, ACLU! Give 'em HELL!
Whenever I hear Americans make that claim, I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.
I had school teachers who thought it was their job to teach the kids how to stand up for themselves and how to stand up to authority. Including theirs.
They are thinking that the columbine kids said they hated people too. And that the admins from that school have a terrible reputation for failing to pay attention to a serious problem.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Welcome to the New American Nanny State.
Right now, schools are under heavy pressure to reduce "bullying". The politicians and money groups have seized on an issue that is easy to win over the hearts of American voters and donors. That's why "bullying" is such a hot issue right now and gets tons of media coverage.
Kids talking about sex, something mentioned in the article as being another reason why the police and school went after this student, is another always hot issue especially with American "conservatives". We must avoid talking to children or exposing them to sex at all costs.
So we have a school where a kid is accused of bullying, and also talking about sex, on Facebook. The school knows if it does nothing they'll get blasted by moms, and the media, about how they failed to protect other children from bullies and perverts. They let a student make hate speech and promote sex talk amongst pre-teens or whatever. But if the school acts then they'll get blasted by people who think that the schools should mind their own business and let the parents handle things. And we know how well parents handle things in modern America.
Instead of finding a middle ground, the school feels the pressure from all sides and.....calls the cops. Huge overreaction in hindsight of course but they must have felt at the time that it was warranted.
But seriously? A kid can't say that they hate their teacher anymore? A kid can't talk about sex with another kid? When I was in school it didn't matter if a kid said he hated a hall monitor or a teacher. Most of the teachers had been around long enough to recognize which kids disliked them. And most of my teachers could tell which boys and girls had started puberty earlier than others because we behaved much differently around the opposite sex. Times have changed.
The school should have just called the student's mother or father and said "some kid tattled on your kid, it's not a big deal, but you should monitor your kid's facebook and just check to see if they are doing anything that is inappropriate". No cops. No teachers. No detention even. Let the parents do their jobs.
It's not ideal. The administration shouldn't ask in the first place, but it's a means you can employ to protect your privacy.
Years and years of political pressure for "zero tolerance," a.k.a. "zero intelligence." The idea that most of the things kids get up to are individual incidents and should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis is anathema to this mentality. But it sells well to parents (until their kids get caught up in it, anyway), to legislators, and to voters in school board elections.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Accessing computer systems with stolen passwords is a crime.
FRA: STFU GTFO
And the correct fix for this is to fire the involved parties with cause. To insure that that principle and cop never work in there respective fields again. They each knew what they were doing and exceeded there powers. Hell the principle should have been informing the kid that they did not need to talk to the officer without there parents and should not do so, they have a responsibility to act in the parents stead in there absence, that's where a lot of there powers come from in the first place.
No sir I dont like it.
The short answer is that they aren't, unless those things happen in a realm that falls under their authority. Schools are not the "child police". Their job is not to discipline children when they do things wrong. Their job is to educate children. Period. Now, if "cyber" bullying happens on school grounds, using school equipment, etc, then by all means they should discipline. If not, they have no standing to say word one about it, any more than if I, as John Q Public, call you a poopoohead, do you get to run off to my employer and tell on me.
It really doesn't matter that you'd rather the schools handle it than the judicial system. The schools don't have the authority. The judicial does. Schools have gotten worse and worse at educating students due to the plethora of things which are not their job that they insist on doing instead.
They didn't just exceeded their powers. They were accessing a computer system with stolen or coerced passwords. This is a federal crime. They are just criminals.