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Sunday, September 02, 2007
Ind. Law - "Schools struggle to secure students in cyber world"
Sue Loughlin of the Terre Haute Tribune-Star writes today on "a whole new territory" - the impact of MySpace and Facebook on students. Some quotes from the long and excellent article:
From cyberspace threats and bullying to false teacher profiles, social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook have opened a new frontier of safety, security, ethical and legal concerns for schools:The COA decision was the April 9th ruling in A.B. v. State of Indiana. See initial ILB entry here. Here is a list of later entires.• Teachers and administrators might be the victims of false profiles or inappropriate comments.
• Online threats can create school disruptions, even if the authors have no serious intent to carry them out. Also, what starts as an online dispute between students can carry over into the classroom.
“It’s worrisome” said Ray Azar, Vigo County School Corp. director of Student Services. “It’s a whole new territory.”
The Internet offers much that is good, but at the same time, “There’s so much out there [students] can get in trouble with,” he said.
The district has become aware of instances of false profiling and other cases involving inappropriate comments about staff members.
When that happens, school district security officers will contact MySpace administrators and ask them to review the site and take it down if it’s inappropriate.
“They don’t want illegal activity,” said Franklin Fennell, school district supervisor of security and support services.
MySpace has provided a telephone number that law enforcement officers can call if there are security concerns, inappropriate postings or false profiles, Azar said.
MySpace has become more cooperative, he said.
“A few years ago, you had to go through a lot of hoops to get anything done and they didn’t want to share any information because of confidentiality,” Azar said. “But now, if a school corp. is working with law enforcement, they’ve made it pretty easy to determine if something is inappropriate and to take it down … We find we can do that pretty easily.”
Other social networking sites aren’t as easy to work with, he said.
Just because someone posts inappropriate or false comments about a teacher or administrator doesn’t meant it’s illegal. It may come down to victims deciding if they want to pursue civil action and whether it’s worth the effort, Azar said.
While typically students use MySpace on a home computer, comments and threats can trickle over into the school setting.
Last year, some Terre Haute South Vigo High School parents became concerned about a MySpace posting that involved threatening comments toward black students. School officials and police investigated.
“We look really seriously at threats and anything that can cause a disruption in school,” Azar said.
Students might also say things about themselves online that are “really incriminating. We try to inform parents,” he said.
Because accounts are private, the school district won’t necessarily have direct access to what is on MySpace or other social networking sites. If parents become aware of something inappropriate or threatening, they should make a printout, if possible, so school officials and law enforcement can more easily investigate, Azar said.
The district doesn’t “go out and search” the sites, he added, but it does act on complaints.
MySpace and free speech. School officials can be limited in their response when it comes to students’ off-school use of MySpace, Azar said.
“One of the things we have to tread lightly on is the issue of free speech. We don’t want to infringe on someone’s free speech. But it’s a fine line sometimes,” Azar said.
“You have to determine what laws have been broken and what school rules have been broken. In some cases, it’s just distasteful, but it’s nothing we can really do anything about” except ask MySpace or other sites to remove the offensive material, he said.
Under the Constitution, a school cannot discipline a student for exercising protected speech. That First Amendment protection does not extend to speech that is criminal or defamatory, or speech that causes a substantial disruption.
Indiana law takes things a step further. A state law says that for a school to apply its disciplinary policies to off-school conduct — including off-school computer use — the incident must be unlawful and interfere with school purposes, said Dave Emmert, attorney with the Indiana School Boards Association.
The issue of false profiles raises another question, Emmert said. What did the General Assembly mean by “unlawful” in a statute that dates back to the 1990s — the pre-MySpace era? The Legislature didn’t clearly define “unlawful,” Emmert said.
He believes that if a student clearly defames a teacher or administrator online and makes false statements, that would be civilly unlawful and would interfere with school purposes, particularly if it led to an investigation of that individual.
In his opinion, a school could discipline a student for such online, defamatory remarks, even if those comments are made off school property.
The issues are complicated and often require school officials to consult attorneys about what they can and cannot do, Emmert said, something Azar acknowledged.
“It gets pretty complicated, and we deal a lot with lawyers,” Azar said. The district will seek a legal opinion about whether a certain course of action is appropriate. “We don’t want to subject the corporation to any kind of legal liabilities,” he said.
Student use and misuse of MySpace has prompted lawsuits and counter-lawsuits across the nation — including Indiana.
Earlier this year, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled that a Putnam County judge violated a middle school student’s free-speech rights when he placed her on probation for posting an expletive-laden entry on a MySpace page.
The entry criticized a Greencastle Middle School principal over school policy on body piercings. The girl’s comments were posted on a page created by another student who falsely claimed it belonged to the principal, Shawn Gobert.
The three-judge panel ordered Putnam Circuit Court to set aside its penalty against the girl. She had been named in a juvenile petition, found to be delinquent and placed on nine months probation.
The Court of Appeals found that the comments were protected and that the juvenile court had unconstitutionally restricted her right of free expression, according to an Associated Press report.
The court determined the student’s comments were protected political speech relating to government [school district] policy on body piercings.
“While we have little regard for [the student’s] use of vulgar epithets, we conclude that her overall message constitutes political speech,” the court opinion states.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 2, 2007 12:56 PM
Posted to Ind. App.Ct. Decisions | Indiana Law