Miscellaneous

Doucheblog!

What kind of world do we live in when a high-school student can't call her school administrators a "douchebag" without literally creating a federal case?

Avery Doninger, 17, claims officials at Lewis S. Mills High School violated her free speech rights when they barred her from serving on the student council because of what she wrote from her home computer.

In her Internet journal, Doninger said officials were canceling the school's annual Jamfest, which is similar to a battle of the bands contest. The event, which she helped coordinate, was rescheduled.

According to the lawsuit, she wrote: "`Jamfest' is canceled due to douchebags in central office," and also referred to an administrator who was "pissed off."

After discovering the blog entry, school officials refused to allow Doninger to run for re-election as class secretary. Doninger won anyway with write-in votes, but was not allowed to serve.

I think the school is getting a bit bent out of shape over nothing, don't you? If administrators don't want to be referred to as douchebags, they oughtn't read their students blogs. They got off fairly easy, if you ask me, and it's completely absurd to keep a student from holding class office -- it's not like she threatened to blow up the school or harm anyone. Besides, canceling Jamfest really was a total douchebag move.

Full post as published by Quiz Law on March 06, 2008 (boomark / email).