Posted by
The Hermit Crab on Wednesday, December 29, 2010 1:47:07 PM
From James Taranto's Best of the Web Today (My comments in bold):
Zero-Tolerance Watch
"A former Florida high school student scored what her attorneys call a victory for the First Amendment last week with the end of her two-year legal battle over her Facebook comments about a teacher," reports the McClatchy-Tribune news service:
Katherine "Katie" Evans' three-day suspension from Pembroke Pines Charter High School for the comments will be wiped from her school record as part of a settlement agreement reached in her federal lawsuit against her high school principal. In addition, she will receive $15,000 in legal fees and $1 in nominal damages, her attorneys said.
Evans was suspended in November 2007 after her principal, Peter Bayer, learned she had created a Facebook group describing her Advanced Placement English teacher as "the worst teacher I've ever met." Bayer deemed the honor student's actions as "cyberbullying/harassment (of) a staff member" and placed her in a less rigorous English class, according to Evans' federal lawsuit.
It's a sad day when our teachers are "cyber-harassed" and "bullied" by being called lousy. We used to do that all of the time in school, in places like the hallway and the cafeteria. Teachers weren't whiners in my day. Just what lesson is a student to draw from such hypersensitivety? It's sure not a lesson in becoming an adult.
The ACLU represented Evans, who won a ruling from a federal magistrate "that [her] speech was constitutionally protected, finding it was off-campus speech that did not cause any disruptions at school and was not lewd, vulgar, threatening or advocating illegal or dangerous behavior."
Hurrah (for once) for the ACLU. That was not easy to type.
We must say, we have mixed feelings about this one. It seems to us that a Facebook page attacking a teacher does implicate school discipline. Moreover, even if a high schooler has the same right to off-campus expression as an adult, it's not as though an adult who created a Facebook page calling his employer "the worst boss I've ever met" would keep his job for long.
Humbug. The Facebook page is not school property. How did the teacher find out about it, anyway? Did the pouty little teacher surf the web trying to find out if someone was writing about them?
Then again, that analogy doesn't quite work, for in a school setting the teacher is supposed to be providing a service to the student rather than the other way around. In this analogy Evans is like an unhappy customer rather than a disgruntled employee.
Of course if your customer creates a Facebook page attacking your establishment, you're free to refuse to do business with him. Maybe the best punishment would have been to transfer Evans into another class or enroll her in a regular public school rather than the charter that displeased her.
No, whiny little Jimmy, you are wrong. The best to have handled the entire situation would have been for the teacher to take no notice of the criticism. The second best would have been for the principle to have told the teacher to grow up (if it was the teacher who complained). If the principle found out before the teacher did, he or she should not only have taken no notice or action against the student, he or she should not have told the teacher anything about it.
That's called being an "adult". At least it used to be.