Racist tweets and punishment

[Moderator1]

Lots of sad people in this town today, for obvious reasons. One of the shows I listened to on the way in was talking about more tweets directed at Joel Ward. It was mentioned that they found some of the tweeters after the Boston incident - high school kids from New Hampshire I believe. And the school had disciplined them, causing one of the dads to pop off. His point was the kid was wrong, no question, but it would be dealt with by him and not the school. Not a lot of precedent for Twitter punishment out there and I'm not sure where I fall. When I get some time, I'll go off in search of some links but I'm curious where others fall on this debate.

No one is denying the kids deserve some kind of punishment. School? Home? Both?

 

[Beaker]

Do we know if the kids were using school computers on school grounds when they made the tweets? If they were, then I can understand the school wanting to discipline the kids.

If it was only done at home and did not interfere with school, then I'm not sure why the school should be doing the disciplining.

 

[Beaker]

Obviously there may be other legal issues if the school is public.

 

[lantaur]

Were the tweets done at school? Otherwise, do kids ever get punished for things they do when not in school?

 

[poindexter]

It seems odd that the school punishes for something like this, but **** it. The last thing I am going to worry about is some asshole kids getting a little extra punishment.

 

[bigpern23]

I think Beaker pretty much nailed it. Unless they used school computers to do it, the school has no business being involved in it. Let the parents do their jobs.

 

[joe king]

Do we know if the kids were using school computers on school grounds when they made the tweets? If they were, then I can understand the school wanting to discipline the kids.

If it was only done at home and did not interfere with school, then I'm not sure why the school should be doing the disciplining.

Agreed. Unless it was done at school, during a school-sponsored activity or using school equipment, it is not the school's job to police kids' behavior.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Schools frequently punish kids for off-school-grounds Internet behavior, though usually in the bullying context. It has to cause a distraction at school, or potentially do so. Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on this, but I think most of the courts that have have come out in favor of the schools, not the students.

There was a recent thread here on some Indiana girls that were punished for out-of-school Facebook posts.

 

[LongTimeListener]

Tough one. Good question. I know a lot of folks think home is home and kids aren't students unless they are at school, but I just don't think that's a realistic view of the entire student community these days.

More to the point, however, is that if my kid ever does something like this I won't be bothering to attempt to reduce the penalties he gets. Sports is obviously the biggest privilege those kids have going for them, and if they have to get benched a few games to learn a lesson, so be it. (I also very much question the dad's true interest in handling it at home.)

 

[Beaker]

Schools frequently punish kids for off-school-grounds Internet behavior, though usually in the bullying context. It has to cause a distraction at school, or potentially do so. Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on this, but I think most of the courts that have have come out in favor of the schools, not the students.

There was a recent thread here on some Indiana girls that were punished for out-of-school Facebook posts.

To be sure, 1st Amendment law is incredibly permissive towards public schools.

 

[Moderator1]

He scored about 10:20 p.m. and the tweets followed pretty quickly - so my educated guess is they weren't school computers.

 

[LongTimeListener]

He scored about 10:20 p.m. and the tweets followed pretty quickly - so my educated guess is they weren't school computers.

Again, I would argue that this is a minor and irrelevant distinction. The school community exists on social media. I don't know the racial composition of the school in question, but imagine being a black student walking the halls with those jackasses the next morning.

 

[Drip]

If done with school property or on school grounds, the school district has every right to discipline.
If done at home, with private property, it's the parent's job. Seems simple enough to me.

 

[cranberry]

An opinion: School shouldn't involve itself at all unless kid associated himself with school via tweet content or handle/avatar. People aren't involved in a single community but many different communities, some of which overlap. Parents and individuals need to take/accept responsibility. In fact, this kind of thing leads people to believe schools are responsible for kids 24/7, which, of course, is impossible.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I'd love to hear from some of our SportsJournalists.com teachers like Crimsonace regarding how much of a distraction off-grounds social networking has become - or not become - during the school day.

 

[Mark2010]

I wonder if the whole social media thing isn't opening a huge Pandora's Box. People have been dropping n-bombs since the day of slavery in the 1600s. Nothing new there. It's just that now stuff has some sort of a platform that others see. And sometimes it shocks them.

I don't know how, or where it is the proper place of a school or any other institution, to punish anyone for their choice of words or sentiments, whether written or verbal. Someone drops a n-bomb or a Gd-bomb, you form your own opinion and life goes on.

If a parent wants to take issue with his own kids' behavior, that's one thing. Many of us had parents who drew the line in some places others might not agree with. But for a public institution to impose some type of penalties for private behavior is overstepping its bounds.

And I think college/high school coaches are wrong for suspending anyone for something said/written privately. If you want to post/tweet "I'm a Nazi and I hate Jews and blacks", that is your right. People are free to agree or disagree, of course. It's like when Ozzie Guillen made remarks supporting Fidel Castro. His personal opinion. Like it or dislike it and move on.

 

[bigpern23]

He scored about 10:20 p.m. and the tweets followed pretty quickly - so my educated guess is they weren't school computers.

Again, I would argue that this is a minor and irrelevant distinction. The school community exists on social media. I don't know the racial composition of the school in question, but imagine being a black student walking the halls with those jackasses the next morning.

Not for anything, but that's life. Whether they run into racist assholes in school, at work or during beer league softball games, they're always going to be out there somewhere. Suspending the kids five days of school or whatever, for an incident that had nothing to do with the school (presumably) isn't going to make them any less racist when they return.

 

[Beaker]

Summation of a 2nd Circuit case concerning a local (to me) school:

Doninger v. Niehoff, 527 F.3d 41 (2d Cir. 2008) was a United States Court of Appeals case. The case was heard by a three-judge Second Circuit panel that included Judges Sonia Sotomayor, Loretta A. Preska, and Debra Livingston. The case involved a student at Lewis S. Mills High School in Connecticut who was barred from the student government after she called the superintendent and other school officials "douchebags" in a LiveJournal blog post written while off-campus that encouraged students to call an administrator and "**** her off more". Judge Livingston held that the district judge did not abuse his discretion in holding that the student's speech "foreseeably create[d] a risk of substantial disruption within the school environment," which is the precedent in the Second Circuit for when schools may regulate off-campus speech On October 31, 2011, the United States Supreme Court declined to grant certiorari on Ms. Doninger's appeal.

Difference being, Doninger's speech disrupted with school function, which is a pretty standard test, assuming this is 1st amendment speech...

 

[Bob Cook]

The school was Gloucester High in Massachusetts, and the students received suspensions from participating in sports and activities -- NOT suspension from school itself.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, every school has a student conduct handbook that covers extracurricular activities. It gives the school fairly wide latitude in punishing students for words and acts that have nothing to do with any school event directly. The idea is that you're representing your school, and that's a privilege, and that privilege can be taken away at any time. Given that the suspended students identified themselves, in most cases, as being from Gloucester High, it would have been tricky for the school to have them in a game, especially if they're playing along side or against black people.

It seems like law is still being worked out on what actions schools can take regarding social media. For example, if a kid is getting bullied by classmates on social media, is it the school's business? (My son's high school principal said the school has had to break up fights that started with Facebook trash-talking, so in that case, yeah.) This story about a case in Mississippi is interesting, in that the court used the Tinker v. Des Moines (all you j-majors should know that one) test that says freedom of speech doesn't end at the schoolhouse door, but speech that has a disruptive effect isn't protected.

http://www.wassom.com/high-school-okd-to-suspend-student-for-rapping-about-dirty-coaches.html

This story is a year old, but it's an interesting compendium of how courts have been all over the map on what schools can do.

http://www.wassom.com/social-media-and-student-discipline-in-public-schools.html

 

[LongTimeListener]

He scored about 10:20 p.m. and the tweets followed pretty quickly - so my educated guess is they weren't school computers.

Again, I would argue that this is a minor and irrelevant distinction. The school community exists on social media. I don't know the racial composition of the school in question, but imagine being a black student walking the halls with those jackasses the next morning.

Not for anything, but that's life. Whether they run into racist assholes in school, at work or during beer league softball games, they're always going to be out there somewhere. Suspending the kids five days of school or whatever, for an incident that had nothing to do with the school (presumably) isn't going to make them any less racist when they return.

People like to say this, but school isn't life. School is a place that kids are required to be and therefore has to come with a set of rules that applies in something other than "take it or leave it" fashion, because nobody can "leave it." Plus, they're kids -- people who are protected until age 18 in all other walks of life for the simple fact that they're judged not ready to make decisions on their own and need some guidance.

Also: It's also life that being a racist asshat on social media can cost you jobs, college admission, friends, and all kinds of other consequences. That would be an equally worthwhile "that's life" lesson to teach kids.