Federal judge tells kids to accept punishment
On Students, MySpace and the First Amendment:
Here’s another story where rather than punishing their kid decided to file a lawsuit.
A 12-year-old girl from a Pennsylvania school made a fake profile of Principal James S. McGonigle. The profile said that his interests included hitting on students and parents called him a pedophile among other things. The unnamed student was given a 10-day suspension. Back in my day if I did something like this not only would I have been suspended I also would have been grounded by my parents until about 15 minutes ago. But no, now parents feel the need to protect their precious little snowflakes from their own actions and show them how they’re not responsible.
The parents obviously took some form of legal action and even got the ACLU involved stating that since the incident took place off of school grounds so the student should not have been suspended.
There’s only one problem. A federal judge gave everyone the good ol’ legal smackdown.
Tossing Tinker aside, Munley focused on other cases, including Bethel School District v. Fraser, in which the Court upheld a suspension imposed on a student who used “an elaborate, graphic, and explicit sexual metaphor” during a speech at a school assembly. In Fraser, Munley said, the justices held that “it is a highly appropriate function of public school education to prohibit the use of vulgar and offensive terms in public discourse,” and that limits on sexually explicit, indecent or lewd speech can be appropriate where the audience includes children.
Which is just a fancy way of saying having free speech doesn’t protect you from the actions of your speech.
Tags: fake, James S. McGonigle, Lawsuit, MySpace
9 opinions for Federal judge tells kids to accept punishment
Chuck D.
Sep 17, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Cry me a river, Mom and Dad…maybe your kid’s not the perfect little angel you think he is? Thank God the judge had enough sense to see this lawsuit for what it was and toss it out.
Bootyj
Sep 19, 2008 at 9:38 am
I seem to vaguely recall another story similar to this one where the teacher or principle sued the student (or family of the student) for defamation of character or libel or something like that, Trench do you recall that one.
If I was this guy, that is what I would have done, get the parents where it hurts.
But then I seem to remember from that other case that (It may have been on another board) that everyone was getting all pissy at the principle for taking it so seriously.
Once again everyone (parents that is), if you are not monitoring your child’s internet activity, then you are responsible for your child’s actions on the internet, plain and simple.
Trench Reynolds
Sep 20, 2008 at 12:40 pm
There’s been more than a couple of cases like this and I’, always amazed at what lengths these parents go to.
blah
Sep 21, 2008 at 2:30 am
You should stick to the news and leave your commentary out of the stories. Or at least keep it to a minimum. Your coming across as more and more of a douche.
Trench Reynolds
Sep 21, 2008 at 2:40 am
Here’s some news for you. If you don’t like what I wrote no one is forcing you to read it.
Now here’s some commentary. Suck it.
bogustoo
Sep 22, 2008 at 5:00 am
To “Blah”:
This is a BLOG, not a news website. If you don’t like the commentary, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
To Trench:
That was probably the 12 year old, surfing the web again without parental supervision.
Trench Reynolds
Sep 22, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Better article…
http://tinyurl.com/52obmh
Bootyj
Sep 23, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Trench - i think you being called a douche is one of the nicer things anyone has said about you! ha
No doubt that comment came from one of those two “victims” of the suspension (or thier parent)
Matt
Dec 20, 2008 at 10:52 pm
Again, as many other people have said: The issue isn’t whether or not what the girl did was right or wrong. It’s pretty much been established that she was wrong.
The issue is whether or not the school should be allowed to punish students for what is done off campus. I don’t believe they should be for a couple reasons.
1. I never did feel comfortable with administrators having the power to regulate off campus behavior. Mostly because a lot of them are on power trips, just plain out of their minds or have a questionable grip on reality. Case in point: zero tolerance policies that result in students being criminally charged for possession of cough syrup or some other thing no rational person would deem harmful or dangerous.
What’s worse is that students have very little protection and very few people ever question the decisions of a lot of these higher-ups. If the school were to succeed I don’t doubt that some admins somewhere will browse MySpace or Facebook looking for profiles of students they don’t like. It’s too much power that no person or institution should be trusted with. Anyone who is comfortable with that should read George Orwell’s 1984.
2. As a taxpayer, I believe school admins should be working on improving schools. Not looking up Facebook profiles of students looking for something that they would deem disruptive (which will more often than not simply be an opinion that conflicts with the school’s position) on my dime.
If there is something that could be a threat, let the police deal with it. They’re better at it.
Kids have been insulting their teachers since the dawn of our education system. If a teacher can’t handle a few petty insults from random students, they should not be teachers.
For years we had a wonderful system. Everything that was done on campus was the business of the school admins. Everything that was off campus wasn’t. It was a good system that should be brought back.
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: