Attention, high school and college students: Your online speech is not nearly as private as you think. And no, we’re not talking about the National Security Agency. The threat to student speech comes from a far more local and immediate source: the prying eyes of school administrators apparently unaware of their students’ rights. All too often, students face unwarranted punishment for online communications.
Examples abound.
Just this past May at Cicero-North Syracuse High School in upstate New York, senior Pat Brown was suspended for three days for creating a Twitter hashtag about a school budget controversy. Brown created the “#shitCNSshouldcut” hashtag to suggest ways his school could save money after voters rejected a $144.7 million budget plan, joking that laying off the school’s principal or getting rid of the “anime club” might help alleviate budget strains. Unfortunately, the principal wasn’t amused; CNN and The Huffington Post reported that Brown was accused of “harassing the principal” and “inciting a social media riot that disrupted the learning environment.”
Also this past May, Heights High School (Wichita, Kansas) senior class president Wesley Teague was suspended and barred from attending graduation after posting a tweet that the school deemed offensive to HSS’s student athletes. Teague wrote that “‘Heights U’ is equivalent to WSU’s football team,” referring to the school’s athletic program and nearby Wichita State University, which eliminated its football program in 1986. Teague was scheduled to give the commencement speech at graduation, but the school sent Teague and his parents a letter stating that Teague’s initial tweet and a few subsequent tweets “acted to incite a disturbance” within school and “aggressively [disrespected] many athletes.”
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