Education Law

A Facebook faux pas

BoardBuzz was intrigued to come across yet another example of “when poor thinking and social networking collide.” You may remember our coverage of the Bozeman, Montana incident where the city requested that job applicants hand over logins to sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.

Well, as we predicted a similar situation has now emerged in the realm of public education. What happened you ask? Ars Technica reports that a high school cheerleading coach forced students on her squad to give up their Facebook account login information. We’re guessing the coach was looking for evidence of drug use and/or drinking.

Instead the Facebook account revealed a discussion between one student/cheerleader in particular and another member of the squad about its internal politics. This discussion was then allegedly shared with other squad supervisors and the school administration. The student claims to have been “publicly reprimanded, punished, and humiliated” as a result of the dissemination of said discussion.

Now the student is filing a suit alleging violation of her Constitutional rights to privacy, free speech, and association. The suit also makes claims of emotional distress, defamation of character, and civil conspiracy. All this over a little Facebook chit chat.

BoardBuzz would like to point out that both accessing another person’s account and sharing your account login with another person violated the Terms of Service of Facebook. It simply shouldn’t be done. Also, it’s wise to regulate your own speech on social networking sites, and this is something of which both students and teachers should be aware. However, regulating student speech and activity that takes place outside of school hours and off of school grounds is a very slippery slope. Many districts have a student code of conduct that does touch on off-campus behavior and discipline. For example, if those cheerleaders had been caught drinking, they would have been suspended from participation in extracurriculars.

The crux here is whether or not a teacher or administrator should go so far as to actively seek out such information. It certainly seems unwise to get into the habit of policing off-campus social networking behavior. Especially when the means of doing so violates the social networking sites’ terms of service. BoardBuzz is interested to see how this case progresses. Schools definitely need to take a serious look at social networking with regard to student safety and privacy.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on July 30, 2009 (boomark / email).