We have yet another case of a student being punished for remarks made on Facebook. Tenth-grader Donny Tobolski described one of his teachers as a “fat ass who should stop eating fast food, and is a douche bag.” He was promptly suspended.
The insult was written after Tobolski was given an unusually heavy amount of biology homework. He wrote the comments on his home computer and after school hours. The first amendment did not stop Mesa Verde High School Principal Rick Messer from punishing Tobolski.
There is no question that his comments were inappropriate and disrespectful. There is no question that Messer should have called the parents and that they should have assured him that they would punish Donny and guarantee that he remove the posting. However, the use of suspension raises serious free speech issues.
We have seen a steady erosion of the free speech rights of students in the last decade. The Supreme Court accelerated that trend in its Morse decision. Former JDHS Principal Deb Morse suspended Frederick in 2002 during the Olympic Torch Relay for holding up a 14-foot banner across from the high school that read “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” The case ultimately led to the Supreme Court which ruled in Morse v. Frederick ruling in 2007 for the Board — a decision that I strongly disagreed with and one that has encouraged over-reaching by school officials into protected areas. Frederick, however continued to litigate, claiming among other things that his first amendment speech rights were violated under the Alaskan Constitution.
For a copy of the Morse decision, click here.
Civil libertarians hoped that Obama would appoint someone with a strong commitment to free speech and student rights. However, he appointed Sonia Sotomayor who was heavily criticized on the Second Circuit for her role in the Donniger case where she ruled against high school student Avery Doninger who contested her punishment for posting an objectionable message on an Internet site about Lewis Mills High School. When she objected to the cancellation of a school event in vulgar terms, school officials barred her from running for Senior Class secretary. In Doninger v. Niehoff, the Second Circuit upheld the right of school officials to punish students for out-of–school speech in a major blow to both the first amendment and student rights.
Increasingly, school officials are assuming the authority to police the out-of-school statements of students and punishing speech that they find objectionable (here). Teachers have also been disciplined for their own after-hours postings (here) and here).
We are raising a new generation of citizens in this increasing authoritarian environment of unchecked and at times capricious authority.
Source: ACLU
Jonathan Turley
welcome to a newly fattened yet somehow thin skinned America! JT rules.
Maybe his teacher was a douchy fat ass who should stop eating fast food! What if he is telling the truth?
Brian,
You seem to be clueless to my method, motive and goal.
I’ve already won.
I did some time ago.
The rest is just sport, sport.
And for the record, you are entitled to your opinion. I have never claimed you as property. However, you are not entitled to your own facts or to have that opinion not challenged simply because you don’t want it challenged.
I’m authoritarian?
You’re the one who has been trying to shut me up to keep me from exposing your nonsense for what it is.
I’m content to let the gallery decide about your lies, actions and what they were designed to do, troll.
And if you want to keep wasting your time spouting your antisocial/anti-legal circular logic bullshit?
I am more than happy to keep tearing it down.
One lives to be of service.
“Increasingly, school officials are assuming the authority to police the out-of-school statements of students and punishing speech that they find objectionable.”
School officials should be tending to students and their educational needs during the school day–not looking for reasons to suspend them from school because of what they post on Facebook.
RE: Buddha Is Laughing, February 15, 2011 at 11:54 pm
You are as entitled to your opinions as I am to mine.
I am not your chattel property.
And you appear to me to be clueless as to your internalized authoritarianism. I find that tragic.
Thats right we didn’t have bongs…… anybody for 40 joints for Jesus….
Unlike the school teacher this child has a free exercise of speech….he may pick and choose his words….even hurtful one…. anybody for 40 bong hits for Jesus….
Woosty,
Even if he can take his nonsense world wide on the “internets” he is still off of school property and not under their control. He too should have a First Amendment right to be a foolish kid.
Patricparamedic,
Even if the language or subject is offensive to us, it should still be protected. Mespo’s quote above of Lenny Bruce says it better than I can. We have to have thick skins in order to ignore stupidity. But that doesn’t mean we don’t think it is stupid and we try to bring our own kids up to a higher standard of conduct.
No, Brian.
You’re a propagandist like the other paid and amateur propaganda trolls that plague this blog. You’re 1) a liar and 2) promoting an anti-civilization agenda. Unlike the regular contributors to this blog, who unlike you, have only one common agenda – preserving and restoring the Constitution and make this country better for all. You, conversely, attempt to undermine the very foundations of civil society with your misinformation, distortions, faulty logic and lies.
And you can try to hide behind your bullshit “research” all you like, sport. No one believes you are researching a goddamn thing. 1) It’s meaningless cover to give the nonsense you say a false air of credibility and 2) has nothing, I repeat NOTHING to do with your proclaimed areas of expertise.
Give it up.
You’re busted, troll.
Thanks for the suggestion. Here I come, running along that narrow path that leads toward real life.
Of course, I am a propagandist, in the same manner as is everyone else who comments on this blawg.
What I am doing is systematically, via a successive approximations method, propagating my concerns regarding those aspects of socialization and acculturation as result in those serious predicaments as are the initial topic of most of the Johathan Turley blawg threads.
To share an idea is to propagate it. Share and propagate are, in the sense I find relevant to this blawg, veritable synonyms.
Since all who comment here are disseminating propaganda merely by commenting, I find it almost funny that someone might actually think I would overlook that ruse.
I describe what I find I have learned and understood, merely to allow someone who may find it useful to find it. I have no need to name-bash any person.
Terrible ideas are fair game for being brought into the light of day, only ideas, not being alive in any sense I find meaningful, cannot be hurt by words of any sort said of such as are terrible ideas.
It is possible to hurt people, not with words alone, but coercive abuse accompanying terrible ideas put to words allow it to be possible to develop illusory correlations between the words (always harmless) and their interpretations (sometimes deadly) and their associations (which may be of terrible harm).
It is interesting to note that very few people are sending what I guess to be comments in reply to what i write. I am inclined to speculate that many blawg readers totally ignore what I write, others may find nothing I write to be even a bit meaningful, and a few may find a useful tidbit from time to time.
The area of interest to me as a research bioengineer is of the one percent of less of people who adapt least well to contemporary society and to the one percent or more who adapt most well to contemporary society.
Whereas much research about society throws out data of lesser than 0.05 significance, I study what is, from an ordinary frequentist approach would be below 0.01 significance.
Thus my efforts are directed toward understanding the significance of the “insignificant.” That is not the mainstream approach.
This comment is a countertransference opportunity in play.
Awwww.
You’ll have to try a better tactic than “I know you are but what am I”, Brian.
We’ve all seen that troll play before.
Run along now, lil’ propagandist.
RE: Buddha Is Laughing, February 15, 2011 at 10:34 pm
My day is always good when a propagandist troll is exposed.
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So, that is why you keep exposing yourself!
You need one good day after another?
There is a simple principle of life; one cannot give what one does not have.
Unlike some other kinds of self-exposure, which are illegal, exposing yourself only through your transferences is a good way for you to come to terms with that of yourself which you may have been coerced into learning to hate.
Decathexis is is possible.
Civility is possible.
Patric,
By “her”, I meant the teacher on the other thread. The hazard of two conversations at once while under the influence. 😉 But as to the boy’s words regarding his teacher?
Eh, I’m going to side on “ignore”.
Kids have been bitching about teachers since the days of Socrates. It is not a profession for the thin skinned. However, the boy is not a state employee. There is no reasonable claim the school can make over his exercise of his right to free speech outside of school. That his words offended? Consider that he is still a child and weight the response appropriately.
Patric,
Do not confuse my defense of her right as a defense of her actions. Her actions were foolish and stupid. I completely agree that a woman with her mentality has no business teaching children.
My day is always good when a propagandist troll is exposed.
Buddha –
“A corollary of the right to free speech is the right to ignore. Some people should learn how to use it.”
No problem there, were we all adults this little exercise would indeed be a non-issue. But those of impressionable age & mind, still learning to sort it all out, could live very well without having to daily pick through the garbage, merely to find those little gems of wisdom.
Garbage in, garbage out. And so it goes: more screwed up kids than, quite likely, ever. And my, oh, my. Just look at those juvenile homicide, fratracide, drug-myself-to-death-acide, rates, shooting off the chart like mercury in August.
My take? The ripple event impacts us all. And – as they say in the world of workers’ comp assessments – repetative injury is more incideous than sudden trauma.
Propagandist Is Laughing says to Buddha Is laughing: Have a Good Day. Now will you have a good day or a Bad Day? The choice is yours Chicken Breath.
Propagandist Is Laughing says to Buddha Is laughing: If all of the Happy Cows live in California, what are the Cows in Wisconsentee?
I get that you’re a propagandist, Brian.
But don’t ever presume to tell me what to do.
That never works.
RE: Buddha Is Laughing, February 15, 2011 at 2:41 pm
A corollary of the right to free speech is the right to ignore.
It’s a pretty powerful tool.
Some people should learn how to use it.
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Whooooopppiiiiieeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!
Congradulations! You finally got it! Horrrrroraayyyy!
Now that you know and understand what to do (and surely you finally have accomplished both because you wrote it out so very, very well), you can start putting into practice that which you so eloquently preach.
So, when something I write bothers you, now you know what to do, ignore it, because it was not meant for you, even if I misinterpret what I am doing and mistakenly seem, by mistake, to address a comment to you, such as this one.
Oh. Sorry.
Straight-man to straight-man humor works the best when only one of the “men” knows the humor.
Straight-man to straight-man humor is the final recourse when things are so bad that only humor remains. As that Cheshire Cat.
Are we there, yet?
Take away the right to say “fuck” and you take away the right to say ‘fuck the government.’
~Lenny Bruce