Looks like this kid and his parents are going to need to teach his school district a little lesson about the First Amendment and relevant Supreme Court decisions related to the student rights.

In the ongoing attempt to punish a student for blogging (chronicled here and here), the Plainfield School Board "magnanimously" decided not to expel a 17-year-old student for posts on his Xanga site that referenced the Columbine massacre.

Unfortunately, the Board did remove the student from Plainfield South High School for the fall semester and place him in the district's alternative school.

PLAINFIELD — A teen's Internet rants against his high school bought him no less than a semester in an alternative school.

The 17-year-old student claimed in his personal blog site that he felt "threatened" by district staff and that the Columbine killers went on the murderous rampage because they were bullied.

If he follows the rules, he will be able to return back to Plainfield South High School second semester, said his mom who, in an effort to protect her son, didn't want her name used.

The Plainfield School Board "deliberated very carefully and had a very good discussion prior to rendering a decision" Monday night, said Superintendent John Harper, who couldn't comment further on the student disciplinary matter due to state and federal laws.

On Tuesday, a school administrator called the mother with the board's decision. The mother said during the expulsion hearing the school district painted a picture of her son as someone who was dangerous.

In reality, she said he was just venting on his blog site about how he felt when the school disciplined his friends for what they posted on their Xanga sites.

"(School staff) kept saying he wanted people to die. He didn't threaten a single person," she said about the expulsion hearing that lasted about 4½ hours last month.

The mother said her son told the hearing officer, "I did not say I was going to be the Columbine student."

She claimed what her son was trying to say was that the school would upset the wrong person and they would have another Columbine on their hands. However, the school staff told her that is not how they interpreted it, she said.

She feels that the board's decision is unfair.

"This is wrong. He did not threaten anyone. It was written from a home computer on home time," she said. "He didn't mention anyone's name. He didn't mention the school. He never made a direct threat."

Carl Buck, the student's attorney, did not return phone calls. But last month, he said the district was taking away the student's education for exercising his freedom of speech.

Now I cannot help but be troubled by this development, even though the board did not expel the student in question. If allowed to stand, this sets a startling precedent -- that speech on the internet is subject to a lower standard of First Amendment protection than speech in other media. It also allows schools a shocking level of control over students away from school.

Consider this -- the district is considering adopting a policy that reads as follows. I'll look at the current situation in light of its terms, because it seems to indicate teh mindset of the district authorities.

"While the district respects rights to freedom of expression under the First Amendment, students may be disciplined for Web site postings that materially and substantially disrupt the educational process or constitutes threats which endanger the health, safety and well-being of district or staff members."

This policy looks pretty reasonable until you dig into it.

First, it is limited to internet postings. These same words would not have been actionable under this policy had a student spoken them on a talk-radio call, uttered them in a television interview, or had them published in a newspaper or magazine. Were these other media included, there would be outrage on the part of free speech and press advocates around the nation. Indeed, the district would recognize that it was crossing into a constitutional quicksand were it to try to implement such restrictions on other forms of dissemination of such speech. That is why there is the specific limit in the policy. The target is therefore medium -- one which the district finds threatening because it is unfiltered by call-screeners or editors -- and the student is simply a convenient scapegoat.

Secondly, how can the words of a student on a website which cannot be accessed from school and which were posted from home, "materially and substantially disrupt the educational process" absent a bona fide threat or some other school-related nexus (posting test answers or instructions for hacking the district server, etc)? The actions of the school administration makes it abundantly clear that there was no bona fide threat discerned -- they did not contact law enforcement to report the alleged threat, which is would be the standard protocol if there were any reason to believe that the young man was contemplating acts of violence at school.

Third, the idea that these words constitute "threats which endanger the health, safety and well-being of district or staff members" is absurd. Who was threatened? What impact did it have on their well-being? Nobody and none, as demonstrated by the inaction of the school. Had this been a true threat which constituted a problem, the police should have been notified. More importantly, the student should not have been permitted to return to the Plainfield South to attend his regular classes during the last few weeks of the school year if his words or actions constituted a threat to the well-being of any individual. Oh, and I cannot help but notice who the district leaves out of the policy. A threat to the safety and well-being of other studetns is not included in the policy -- so I can only presume that the real "offense" being targetted by the policy is an adolescent failing to show proper respect and deferrence to teachers and administrators outside of school hours. In this case, the offense is a failure to kow-tow to a couple of pompous administrators who sought to regulate off-campus, after-school speech that is beyond the legitimate reach of public officials under the First Amendment.

And therein lies my concern. In the watershed decision on the civil liberties of students, Tinker v. Des Moines, the majority held that students do not shed their civil liberties at the schoolhouse gate. Implicit in this position is the understanding that students do, in fact, have those civil liberties away from school. That notion is meaningless if a school can act to punish a student based upon the exercise of one of those civil liberties away from school and outside of school hours. It is my sincere hope that the student and his family pursue this matter in court, for I believe they have a strong case that will define the parameters of protected student speech on the internet, and the degree to which school authorities may intrude into the after-school activities of students.

I've only encountered one post on the district's decision at this time. McKreck over at Occidentality offers a perspective that is somewhat more sympathetic to the school district, though he agrees that the decision was incorrect.

Posted by: Greg at 11:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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