Friday, December 09, 2005

Cheerleaders Can't Blog--At Least In Texas

Hat Tip: The Ed Wonks

Here is a troubling trend--schools disciplining students for the content of their blogs written outside of school. According to a story in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Star-Telegram:
Teen Web logs — diaries kept online where anyone can see them — are creating a disciplinary predicament for school administrators in Tarrant County and across the nation, education and legal experts say.

Principals have intervened when unkind words posted on the Internet caused confrontations between students at school, and some students are being disciplined for what they write online outside of their school activities.

Some of the recent actions in Texas relating to student blogs:
A Birdville High School cheerleader was kicked off the freshman squad last month for having vulgar language in a Web log, or blog, she maintains on her home computer.

Grapevine-Colleyville school district officials said a student was removed from an extracurricular activity this year because of the student’s online comments.

And last spring, a Martin High School cheerleader in Arlington was taken off the squad for something she wrote in a blog, district officials confirmed.

Let us be clear, there is a vast difference between blogging at home and blogging at school. If a student uses a school computer, they can be punished for the content of their blog. In many ways a blog written using a school computer is like a school sponsored student newspaper, produced with funds and facilities from the school is subject to school review. As much as we might disagree with that legal rule, it is currently the law.

Can kids be mean and hurtful--you bet. Can some of the comments create problems? Sure and if the comments and posting are false and the writer knows they are false, they can be held to account for the libelous speech.

However, when a student uses their own computing resources, at home, barring some other illegality of speech, such as libel or death threats, that content is beyond the reach of school officials. What kind of message about the First Amendment are we sending our children when they can be punished for activities, done in private away from school?

As I said, schools can regulate activity occuring with school property, such as using school computers to blog. While I think the matter is splitting hairs, I can get the rationale behind the prohibition.

Courts have been fairly consistent in ruling that schools can discipline students for what they write using school computers, he said.

But they have split on Internet postings that were created at home.

“Some courts have said that if it’s at home, the school can’t do anything about it,” he said.

An interesting twist on a couple of these cases is that the students involved participate in extracurricular activities. In past cases, the Supreme Court has upheld drug testing and other privacy impositions on students on the theory that they were participating in extra-curricular activities.
Other area school officials who have weighed in on the issue say that students in extracurricular activities are considered leaders in their schools and that they should be held to strict standards.

“Participation in these activities is a privilege, not a right,” said Julie Thannum, spokeswoman for the Carroll school district. “The code of conduct is specific about what happens for misconduct regardless of time or location.

“Certainly a blog situation with inappropriate content — especially if it says inappropriate things about a teacher or a student — could be considered misconduct, given the right circumstances.”

Often, schools enforce conduct codes if administrators feel a school’s reputation is compromised.

“Schools are trying to impose more socially respectable standards on students,” said Frank Kemerer, a regents professor of education law at the University of North Texas in Denton. “Schools are trying to assert more control into socializing students.

But there is a difference between conducting drug tests, which is searching for illegal activity harmful to the student on many levels and discipling a student for exercising a protected right. A school has no more right to regulate the content of a privately written blog than they do to regulate the dinner conversation of a student.

Blogs may be a method by which students can vent, express some anger at other students, teachers, class work, etc. from the privacy of their own homes, without the additional consequences of say school discipline for disrespecting a teacher or causing a fight with another student.

Freedom of speech is not designed to protect the comfortable or popular speech, it is designed to protect the speech that may make our blood boil, that confronts and cause discomfort. Telling a student that the content of their blog may result in school discipline because is it mean or violates some arbitrary standard of a school official is equivalent to telling a student they have to free speech rights.

No comments: