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Hey, kids! Hate school? Don't tell Facebook!
The First Amendment right to insult one's school increasingly challenged.
High school sucks. Did you forget? Don’t believe it? Check out Facebook.
Contrary to the evidence on Facebook student pages however, high schools aren’t the only educational institutions capable of totally sucking.
Even schools you elect to attend, for example, the Salon Professional Academy of Elgin, Ill., can also act as an oxygen vortex. At least that’s the opinion of a Nicholas Blacconiere, an academy student under legal fire for enshrining his negative opinions and those of others on a private page he posted on the world’s most popular social networking site.
“Facebook 'suck sites' to be tested in court,” proclaimed the Chicago Tribune in reporting the academy’s $50,000 suit against Blacconiere for unauthorized use of the school's logo and for emotional damage caused by defamatory comments posted on his page, titled “Tspa RobinHood.”
Other media followed suit, with headlines such as “ ‘My School Sucks’ pages under attack,” and the like. Why it’s as if just now, a couple of months short of 2010, the First Amendment rights of Internet-savvy students are under fire and not, in fact, an ongoing and troublesome issue.
While the medium of expression has changed over the years — from the cover of one’s Mead Trapper Keeper to Facebook and other Internet-loitering spots — proclaiming the suckitude of one’s school is an ancient rite of passage. It may even be necessary for growing personalities to assert such independence, according to some experts. The change of venue, however, has led to myriad lawsuits involving disgruntled students and the schools that punish them.
“Forty years ago, the Supreme Court resoundingly affirmed that young people attending public schools do not ‘shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,’ ” writes Frank D. LoMonte in “Reaching Through the School House Gate: Students’ Eroding First Amendment Right,” his February 2009 brief for the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy.
Recent developments in the law of online speech, however, are rattling the certainty of that assumption,” the Student Press Law Center executive director continues. “In the view of at least some federal judges, students do not enjoy — anywhere, anytime —the same right to comment on school as ordinary citizens.”
One of the more prominent cases still pending started two years ago, when Katherine “Katy” Evans, then a Pembroke Pines Charter junior in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., built a Facebook page titled “Ms. Sarah Phelps is the worst teacher I’ve ever met.” It featured a photo of the teacher who disgruntled Evans so, as well as an invitation to others to "express your feelings of hatred." Evans created the page to blow off steam. Now it’s the subject of an ACLU lawsuit.
It was hardly the first Facebook page posted by a disgruntled student. Even now, a Facebook search for “student organizations” with “high school” and “sucks” in the title returns hundreds of results augmented with the names of specific schools, pages that have been online for months, even years.
For Evans, however, this teenage indiscretion — which she removed after a few days — cost her a three-day suspension and removal from her college-critical “advanced placement” status in her senior year.
"It is ironic that high school is where students first learn about First Amendment rights, including the right to free speech, yet it is Katy's high school that unconstitutionally trampled those very rights," ACLU cooperating attorney Matthew D. Bavaro, said in a press release announcing the suit last December.
Unfortunately, interfering with an adequate education has served before as punishment for such online shenanigans. In 2007, the ACLU successfully defended Justin Layshock, a high school senior who received 10 days suspension for a MySpace parody of his principal. What’s more, Layshock, a “gifted” student, was removed from his classes and placed in an “alternative learning environment” far below his capabilities.
“Significantly, the Layshock court took care to examine the basis for the punishment, and had no difficulty concluding that the suspension was imposed purely for the content of the student’s speech, and not for any non-speech disruptive conduct on campus,” LoMonte writes in “Students’ Eroding First Amendment Right.”
“Thus, the school could not justify its actions by claiming that the discipline was for on-campus misconduct,” one of few reasons schools can legally interfere in a student’s off-campus behavior.
Still, these cases are never so clear-cut. The precedent set 40 years ago that ensured First Amendment rights for public school students took place long before the Internet era, with its cyberbullying and the like.
Appeals are still pending for the case of Avery Doninger, who in 2007 was not permitted to run for senior class secretary after she referred to faculty at Lewis Mills High School in Burlington, Conn., as “douchebags” on her LiveJournal blog. Faculty called the student, who’d previously never been in trouble, a cyberbully.
The Internet “is bringing up things we used to say verbally, that’s now searchable and online,” says Robert L. Shibley, vice president at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). While FIRE advocates for university students, who have significantly more rights than high school students, Shibley notes the slippery slope between the two education levels.
It is not unusual, Shibely says, for a university to note a precedent set for high school students and First Amendment rights and attempt to apply that precedent to people old enough “to fight in a war, vote and drink.”
“You have sort of an Orwellian atmosphere at universities, and especially at high schools, Shibley says. “Administrators feel they have to tamp down (online speech) or somebody's going to sue the high school.”
“It’s a big mess, and it’s just coming out everywhere.”
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Posted in: News on November 19, 2009 @ 10:12 PM
Tags: Censorship, Internet, School, Youth Rights
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hold on guys, i'll get to the bottom of this.
shut the fuck up, mark
hey savarin, you cash that check yet? trolololol
wait, wait. hang on just a minute... this doesn't seem right.
damn it cameron, i told you we should have sued them!
shawn fanning? you're telling me i just slept with shawn fanning?!
yep
what?
huh?
woah
my principal is an evil bitch
Hello. I am a prison at South Side (www.sssd.k12.pa.us) who is willing to suck a cock just to get out of school. I'm kidding about sucking your cock but if you wanna go to school in Hell. Come here.
PS. Our principal is Big Brother
I know right, i feel the same way
Hello there. I am a prisoner at forest park (www.fptrojans.org) if you want to get somewhere in life then don't go to this fuck hole of a school! O did I mention that our principal is hitler? XD
well im sitting in iss for 3 days so i might as well express my thoughts on school. it sucks,its forced upon us, and i believe it is the main reason kids like me smoke weed. if i didnt a would be a complete dickhead and atleast 4 or 5 of my teachers would be deceased. that is all
"The Internet “is bringing up things we used to say verbally, that’s now SEARCHABLE and ONLINE,” says Robert L. Shibley, vice president at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education"
Doesn't that just mean you have to stop sucking so much? It seems teachers and principals are angry that they are being called out on their bullshit in the public eye; shouldn't it mean that they need to stop sucking rather than try to take away students' amendment rights so they can continue being douchebags?
i dont care about shit fuck school and every body.
I think schools, including the one I attend, should supervise the teaching of the teachers they employ much more and check what the average grade that students get from them. I have one teacher that just does not know how to teach! I think some just forget that we students have never heard of most of this stuff(for example in Chemistry) and then show one example and expect us to understand it! That is simply not how it works with most of us, right? And then when I ask for help I am just told "Oh, we did that in class" or "just look at yoir notes", or "you can look that up in the book", and sometimes even "you don't need to know that now".
I pay attention in class 100% of the time, I am not the kind to text in class or be disruptive, and have a 3.5 GPA. I used to be really interested in school but some teachers just suck. And yes, classes need to me made more interestig and interactive!! I am so tired of sitting in a chair all day! So many kids sleep in class and doze off. We are young and what to have a little more action than simply sitting in a chair!
Ironically, my teacher linked me to this site. She's one of the few teachers in my school career I can actually say understand students, to the best of her ability anyway. Taking our rights is complete fucking BULL, and if this ever goes down in MY school, I'll happily sue, protest, whatever, at whatever cost. I have ALWAYS made 4.0 or higher. If they try to punish me by dropping my classes, I'll just take it to court. That shit's illegal, and for supposedly wanting to make us the best we can be, school's are pretty damn bent on making us look and feel stupid.
Cause TROUBLE at your school...SABOTAGE teachers things...write anti-school papers around there...text messages too. Stage boycotts, refuse assignments, cuss out the teachers that need it...DONT put up with their crap !! If you DO...you will be a mental case by 18. I was suicidal after HS from all the bullying and bad teachers I had. Is it any wonder they have school shootings? Im NOT at all surprised.
You all have a BORN TALENT God put into you...DONT let it get wasted...USE IT! I learned to sing, act and joke in front of my class and now Im an actor who LOVES his work...Dont worry about failing school, its not for all of us.
OH SHOOT.....We`re not even allowed to have opinions
LOVE KILLS SLOWLY!!!!!!!!!
HELLO. SCHOOL DOES FUCKING SUCK. AND YOU KNOW WHATS ALMOST AS WORSE AS HIGHSCHOOL-----DINT THINK ANYTHING WOULD BE DID YOU???? Its COLLEGE!
yeah i know college is almost just as worse as highschool. Im a sophmore in college and it blows. I have all this work to do. And I NEVER EVER FEEL LIKE DOING IT, I NEVER WANT TO DO IT. Its not that i dont want a degree or to succeeed in life but so much of it is repetitive bullshit! BLAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SOS. ONLINE CLASSES SUCK TOO. I took 3 classes online this quarter and guess what im 3 weeks behind.
I wanna puke.
I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
FUCK. I have to make this comment longer. Skool sux rite ikik
this is not SPAM I SWEAR ON YOUR MUM
SPAM
SPENCER IS GAY AND PRETENDS HE HAS A GIRFRIEND FAG LIFE
=I KNOW ITS TRUE
r u guyz budzzzzzzz
>>>>>>>>>>>>.< spencer and gay puppy are going to see All time low as a date wooopty yay
My school isent bad, its just all the damn retarded teachers that think because they have a freakin degree they dont have to listen to kids. PEACE OFF
School is boring no matter how you turn it on it's head it should be abolished
School is taking away our freedom. We aren't even allowed to voice our opinions anymore! Our Founding Fathers built this country on FREEDOM. Well it just goes to show how "Free" we actually are. America is so messed up nowadays, school is just going to turn us into money slaves just like the adults of our society. My current middle school teacher Mandy Coleman is a bi*ch. She slams her fists on our desks and screams at us if we talk even a little. She needs to be fired and this school system needs to be abolished.
i want to cum harder daddy
whatever school sucks forever
12 years of my life whated. who evan needs to know when the pilgrums came no one! math use a calculater not school