A Lewis S. Mills High School student who was barred from running for class office after she called administrators a derogatory term on an Internet blog is accusing top school officials of violating her free speech rights.
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Later that night, about 9:25 p.m., Doninger used her personal computer to post the entry on the blog.
“Jamfest is canceled due to the douchbags in central office. Here is an e-mail that we sent out to a ton of people and asked them to forward to everyone in their address book to help get support for Jamfest,” she wrote. “Basically, because we sent it out, Paula Schwartz is getting a TON of phone calls and e-mails and such. We have so much support and we really appreciate it. However, she got pissed off and decided to just cancel the whole thing all [sic] together.”
A few weeks later, on May 17, Doninger went to the school office to accept her nomination for class secretary. Niehoff handed a copy of the blog entry to Doninger and told her to apologize to Schwartz, tell her mother about the blog entry, resign as class secretary and withdraw her candidacy, according to the lawsuit.
Source: The Courant: Free Speech Suit Filed
Of course, I had something to say about it:
It seems like a lot of respondents to this article are missing a fundamental point - the school officials grossly overstepped their authority. It is *not* the job of a government official to discipline students for inappropriate comments that are said outside of their school. The simple fact is that someone, be it the principal or the superintendent, has abused their position to punish a student over speech protected by the first amendment just because their ego was bruised.
Was Avery Doninger’s comment uncalled for? Certainly, yes. I absolutely agree that one must be cautious with what they post on the Internet - a public forum that is archived. Once you commit something to a web site, you have to assume that it will be available somewhere on the web for the rest of time. And yes, employers do Google prospective candidates - I have seen this first-hand.
But, you must also consider the context of the message. It was obviously an announcement to her friends. Teenagers are going to use this sort of language when talking to their peers; it is a fact of life. The principal and superintendent deal with these sorts of attitudes daily; they are expected to have a thick enough skin to deal with juveniles. That is, unfortunately, how the world works in 2007.
But again, the matter at hand is that a *government official* is punishing a student for referring to her as a ‘douchbag’, even if it was unjustified. That sort of coarse comment is protected speech, like it or not. It is an opinion.
What does this show the students? That any comment that the administration does not like will be dealt with in a heavy-handed manner? That there is no value whatsoever placed on the Bill of Rights? Already, we are seeing students’ privacy stripped away in the name of security - and in most cases, the security measures the schools take are to mitigate liability after-the-fact and would have no real impact if someone truly wished to bring a knife, handgun, or rifle into the building. What does this teach them?
I find it disturbing how many of you are crying ‘Go sit in a corner and cry, liberal scum!’. You are dismissing a dangerous precedent and a horrific, anti-American lesson to her and her schoolmates.
