Tuesday. Is it the first day of school already, for students the most dreaded of the year, cause for anxiety even days and weeks before its arrival?
It does have its upside. That first school day opens the door for new relationships and rekindled old ones. Students reconnect with friends after a summer spread to the four winds. Some teachers and students meet for the first time.
With time, some of the classroom give and take will seem divinely inspired, a cosmic meeting of mentor and pupil. In other instances, the same will be strained from the get go, as desperate a struggle as that between captor and captive.
But in the modern world, when tensions run high in the classroom, even the most passive of students can find an outlet, even an audience, for lambasting “Mr. Booger Eater” or “Ms. Witch”.
Back in the day, students vented by scribbling vitriolic notes in a bathroom stall or by making nasty comments to buddies in the hallway. Today, too many students unwisely make very public postings on social media sites like Facebook. With no Supreme Court ruling as of yet concerning online teacher bashing (a.k.a. “cyberbullying”), some schools are now attempting to regulate on their own, and students may not see the long arm of campus law coming to nab them.
Pembroke Pine Charter High School senior Katherine Evans, for example, was disciplined for creating a Facebook page called, “Mrs. Sarah Phelps is the worst teacher I’ve ever met!” The page included a photograph of the teacher and asked other students who shared the sentiment to “express their feelings of hate.”
Evans was suspended three days, removed from her advanced placement classes and put into “lesser weighted honors classes.”
Now 19 years old and out of high school, Evans is suing the school principal for violating her First Amendment rights, and nationwide there are at least a dozen other lawsuits like hers coming out of the woodwork.
Evans’ Florida case highlights the legal difficulties school administrations face as they struggle with students’ free expression rights in a digital world.
In 1969, students’ First Amendment rights saw protection after the Supreme Court allowed public school students to wear black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War. It was ruled kids could express their opinions so long as that expression didn’t seriously interfere with the school’s day-to-day operations.
Now students using Facebook or Myspace to express themselves have changed the game. It was pretty ugly for Evans to identify Mrs. Phelps in a public space as the worst teacher she ever met. And even if it’s judged her right to say such things, doing so wasn’t very bright. It may be legal to vent your spleen in a public space, but it’s a stinky business, and much of the reek sticks to the insult hurler.
Still, teachers and school boards should probably think twice before trying to limit students’ free speech in off-campus forums. If a student makes a serious threat against another student or teacher on Facebook, or if the posting has illegal content, the school should take action. But in cases where the posting isn’t threatening or criminal, teachers should take it as a naïve expression of anger or, better yet, contact parents and let them deal with it.
Our school board has no formal policy for dealing with cyberbullying if it occurs off campus.The board’s position is that such activity falls outside its jurisdiction. But waters remain murky. Nationally laws are still hatching as cyberbullying lawsuits increase.
Students should think twice before making nasty posts. Having the right to say something doesn’t make it a smart thing to do. |
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