Should information on Facebook be grounds for school suspension? PDF Print E-mail
Thursday, 19 March 2009
Students must be held accountable vs. Schools have concrete boundaries

Students must be held accountable

The internet often seems like a world of its own, separated from the realities and rules of everyday life. Yet the internet world and reality are beginning to increasingly collide. School districts across the country have begun to punish students for the material that they publish online. Schools are correct for punishing students for online activities like character defamation of teachers and posting pictures of themselves engaging in illegal activities. Schools must teach students the hard way that wrong actions should be punished no matter where they occur.

Just as schools have the right to search students’ lockers at school under reasonable suspicion, they should also have the right to do so with students’ virtual selves. When students post material on websites such as Facebook and MySpace, they are opening their lives to the entire world, including school administrators, to see.

If a school comes across online material that depicts a star athlete or school government officer engaging in an illegal activity, should they merely ignore it? Surely, one’s moral compass would dictate otherwise. Students must be disciplined for their actions in both the real and virtual worlds.

In the case Tinker vs. Des Moines, the Supreme Court ruled that students could exercise free speech at public high schools as long as such speech did not interfere with the school’s educational mission. A similar standard should be applied to speech that students post online. The mere controversy that could arise from a student slighting a teacher or fellow student or by posting an ill-advised photo easily falls under the category of interference with school activities.

Schools have the an obligation to provide a safe and high quality learning environment for all students. If the speech of students online interferes with this responsibility, schools are justified in handing down punishments.

Some may argue that schools have no right to view online profiles of students and certainly not punish students for materials they put online. They would say that allowing schools to do so would result in the removal of any privacy students may have in their personal lives. However, there is no clear cut policy restricting schools from doing so.

An individual is responsible for material he or she puts online just as they are responsible for something they write or say. If a student verbally harms another student or staff member on the Internet, they should be subject to the same punishment they would as if they had done so in school. Students must understand that what they do on the internet can have a tangible effect in real life.

What this all comes down to is responsibility, responsibility by both the schools and the students. Students have a responsibility to protect themselves and their reputations on the internet just as they would in real life. Schools have a responsibility to provide a comfortable and effective learning environment for their students.

The internet has provided students with many amazing intellectual and entertainment opportunities but at the same time has some dangerous elements. Students must behave appropriately online or risk a suitable punishment for their behavior. Such actions represent a meshing of school and internet in which the proper authorities must be permitted to take appropriate action, where no law prevents them from doing so.

Schools have concrete boundaries

Morse v. Frederick was a case from Alaska where a student was suspended for holding a banner which read, "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" during the passing of the Olympic torch during school hours. The Supreme Court upheld this decision stating that it not only promoted the use of illegal drugs during school hours but pressured students to partake in an illegal activity – posing a danger to other students.

Now new problems arise on the questions of free speech. The students from the previous case were not on school property, yet they still faced disciplinary action from the principal. With many advancements in technology, the internet has become a readily available resource for students and others to use. However, controversy has arisen over the issue of what students are allowed to write regarding their classmates and teachers while using sites such as Facebook.

In 2007, a girl was suspended and placed into a lower level class after creating a Facebook group that declared that her teacher was "the worst person ever." The school viewed the group as a personal attack against the teacher and labeled it as cyber-bullying despite the lack of threats or profanity used on the group’s page. The student sued the school claiming that she was expressing her freedom of speech and that she created the group off school property and not during school hours.

This raises the issue, what is the extent of a school system’s control over student free speech? Currently, there are no Supreme Court cases declaring the boundaries of schools’ control over free speech on the internet, which historically speaking is a relatively new form of communication and expression. In Morse v. Frederick, the students were blatantly promoting the use of illegal drugs, but in the 2007 case no such proclamations were made and nor were any proclamations made during school hours or a school sponsored event.

A school’s ability to limit their students’ freedom of speech should be very restricted. Students have a right to express their feelings about the school, and the school should not interfere or punish the students for such expression. It is not possible for a school to have a vast and omnipotent control of what students post on the internet about themselves or others, and rightly so. The boundaries of school control should be limited to and only to that of the school. There is no reason for schools to attempt to regulate what is clearly out of their scope of practice unless material posted online poses a direct threat to students or occurs on school property.

A school does not have jurisdiction about what goes on outside of school. Schools are not agents of the law. If a teacher does not like what someone posts online, they should go through legal channels to easily solve an often all too over complicated problem. Allow for the legal system to do what it does best –judge- which at the same time removes the biased and unbalanced enforcement of school policies and the issue of where the school’s boundaries of enforcement lie.

Some schools will argue that they are merely trying to preserve a sense of order and emotional balance in the educational system by discouraging groups that supposedly cyber-bully a member of the school. However, restricting students’ rights is too large of a sacrifice. Allowing schools such great of a reach complicates an issue that can already be handled by the legal system. If schools can restrict activity outside their walls, where does their power end? Students must be allowed free speech outside of school even if the material deals with school issues. The right to free speech was guaranteed to all citizens of the United States, including students.

 
 
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