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Student takes on school district
A federal appeals court is weighing whether a student’s free speech rights were violated after she was banned from serving on student council because she used vulgar slag while complaining about school administrators on her weblog.
After discovering the blog entry, school officials refused to allow [Avery] Doninger to run for re-election as class secretary. Doninger won anyway with write-in votes, but was not allowed to serve.
A lower federal court had supported the school. U.S. District Judge Mark Kravitz, denying Doninger’s request for an injunction, said he believed she could be punished for writing in a blog because the blog addressed school issues and was likely to be read by other students.
Her lawyer, Jon L. Schoenhorn, told the appeals court Tuesday that what students write on the Internet should not give schools more cause to regulate off-campus speech.
Did the school act appropriately, or was it outside its jurisdiction and a violation of the student’s rights?
back to top17 Comments to “Student takes on school district”
This one is tricky, I think. All schools have policies on profanity, as they should. However, the girl wasn’t at school.
The administrators seem to be taking out their anger on her for criticizing them. They have obviously “lost” in the minds of the students since they elected the girl anyway.
They will be better off letting her hold the office at this point.
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I suppose it all comes down to how much independence you believe the student government has. Were it entirely independent of administration, then there would be little that could be done. However were there some statement about it existing as part of the school program, etc. then it does seem that the school is within its rights.
At the very least, they were morally correct. You can’t be slamming the very body you are supposed to represent. As James says (paraphrasing), does a spring issue both the sweet and brackish?
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Hey, if she can be free to say whatever she wants on a blg, then the school should be free to hold certain standards for students who serve on the student counsel. Everybadoy’s free! But we must live with the consequences of our free actions.
The big mistake would be for the student to come away thinking that she can say anything she wants anytime, anywhere but the school officials must be forced to tolerate her speech.
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I don’t know whether the administration would have reacted in the same way if she had made the criticism without the vulgar words, but she appears to show a lack of wisdom in how to respond to a situation she considers unfair.
I never served on student council or had much interest in what it did (mostly putting on social events I wasn’t interested in going to), but I always thought of it as representing the students, not the administration, so I don’t know that I would say she was slamming the body she was supposed to represent, as Harris says. But to the extent that the student council acts as a liaison between students and administration, she does not show the kind of attitude I would look for in someone for that role.
That still doesn’t say whether the students should have a right to choose her to represent them anyway. I wonder if the school has some kind of written guidelines for what is required to serve on the student council.
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Sounds to me like she represents her constituents well. She should serve on the council, but no one should have to pretend she is other than a foul-mouthed brat.
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Let the inmates run the asylum.
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Vulgarity is hip, and nothing says ‘cool’ like some well place expletives against power structures. Thank you New Left of the 60s and 70s. But vulgarity is also a mark of intellectual laziness. Maybe there lies a dual indictment of the school in this story.
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This seems to be a matter of first impression for the Second Circuit. The district court judge applied the old precedents he has, but the Internet aspect may or may not change that. She wasn’t on school property. Can the school district control what she does at home? What if she lived back in the day and had walked around town placing flyers on cars or walked down the street with a placard with the same words that she posted on the web, or if she had met her friends at the local Dairy Queen and said the same things?
I don’t know how this is going to turn out, but I doubt the court will put any school administration in the position of being dictated to by a snarky little whatever. They need control within the school setting. She may win her “right” to freely blog, but a new rule regarding school officer requirements may be in the offing. The student may have to make a choice of what’s more important to him/her — dissing the administration or working with it in a responsible, more adult-like manner.
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“Vulgarity is hip, and nothing says ‘cool’ like some well place expletives against power structures. Thank you New Left of the 60s and 70s.” ~ mac (7)
“Go f— yourself!” ~ Dick Cheney to Sen. Pat Leahy on the floor of the US Senate, June 2004
Thank you, new left.
[eyeroll]
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I don’t see how this violates her free speech; it’s not like the school required her to shut down her blog or even remove the offending post. She was removed from student leadership as a result.
Let’s put it in another non-student gov’t context: if I’m a high school basketball player, and I post on my blog that my coach is a ^%&*$ and the rest of the team and other people at the school read the entry, I’d be off the team so fast it’d make my Nikes spin. Did that violate my free speech?
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I think NJLawyer nails it when she says “The student may have to make a choice of what’s more important to him/her — dissing the administration or working with it in a responsible, more adult-like manner.”
Take away the internet context for a minute – if this girl said these things to her friends at the Dairy Queen, or if RobHays ball player dissed the coach in the lockerroom to his teammates, they’d have a very limited audience. Using the internet, the only difference is they’ve basically proved to a much wider audience that they’re jerks.
So the problem will be she’s got a lousy attitude, and is going to have a hard time working with the school administration. But hey, if that’s what the kids want, let them have her as their rep. They just shouldn’t expect that she’ll get much done or that the administration she dissed will bend over backwards to work with her.
I don’t think the offense rises to the point where she should be automatically disqualified, but boy, do I wish her classmates decided for themselves that she’s not the person they want representing them!
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Disagreement can be expressed without showing the contempt for another that vulgarity and name calling demonstrates.
Student government is not a requirement for schools and participation is not mandatory for students when student government programs are offered. Student government is employed as a teaching tool so that students can learn about principles of government and civil discourse. In this sense, it is like an extra-curricular civics class. Teachers and administrators DO have the right to set standards for behavior and participation in such classes. This young lady has blatantly and belligerently shown public contempt for her teachers and has thus disqualified herself for this extra-curricular class, which, by the way, is a privilege, and not a right.
Students need to be reminded of this and disabused of the false idea that student government has any real authority. Sometimes, in their youthful arrogance, they just get a little “too big for their britches.”
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The school has the right to set standards, but have they? Standards need to be clearly established and communicated proactively. It sounds like they are just reacting to a situation that they don’t like. If they want to set a standard now, they need to give her a warning that this behavior in the future will result in removal from student council.
The truth is she does have the right to say whatever she wants on her personal blog. (If the blog was some sort of official student council blog, then the rules change.) This is not a case of shouting fire in a crowded theater. Are schools now going to have to have blog police that monitor the content of student blogs, how about their facebook comments? That sounds like a nightmare. IMHO, the school would have been better off pretending that they didn’t know anything about it. Sometimes you have to choose your battles.
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Don’t you people even read the article linked?
She wrote [from the article]:
“‘Jamfest’ is canceled due to douchebags in central office,” and also referred to an administrator who was “pissed off.”
Yes, such ridiculous name calling lacks class, but expressing anger to “central office” shouldn’t have necessarily disqualified her. Must the students always refer to “central office” in high and glowing terms?
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http://www.orient-lodge.com/node/2843
http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/doninger-v-niehoff
http://nygang.blogspot.com/2008/03/averys-midterm-exam-civics-for.html
These are three good sources for more indepth information. There is more at stake here than a foul-mouthed kid demanding to get her way. To start with, does anyone really want the government (public school admins) reaching into a home to punish at home behavior? It was up to the parents to deal with what occured in their home at night. Second, does anyone really want a generation of kids that are so lazy and uninvolved that they don’t get fired up? A generation of kids that don’t want to take on the authority? How are they supposed to get ready to lead if they are smacked down for their clumsy efforts? This was a lost teaching moment. Of course the comment was rude – of course she should have been confronted with how bad it makes her look. But here is a kid who is involved, who cares enough to get up set when things go ary, who wants to participate. Is it really the best response to eliminate her involvement? Then there is the question of democracy. How do we raise a generation to lead a democracy if a vote is disregarded? SHE WON BY WRITE IN!! Democracy is a leap of faith. Do the admins really think that the student body is incapable of electing a good representative? If any electorate makes a bad decision a price is paid with bad leadership. Should this class of students – seniors – voting in ‘08 – really be taught that ‘big brother’ will select for them. Talk about how to raise a generation of lemmings.
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The administration here is between a rock and a hard place. Trying to think how this would apply to my school situation…I can only think that the difference here is that the student officers at my school are often not the kind of people who will criticize the administration in such an unspecific, unprofessional way. If they are, they are not stupid enough to post online in that way. Oh yeah, as far as I know, our administration either likes to play dumb and not let on that they read student blogs, or they actually don’t. There really is nothing more I could say that others haven’t. One more thing comes to mind though: How old is this girl, and did her parents care? They seem to have stayed out of it?
Someone else probably brought this up first, but if so I overlooked it.
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Lydia, post 15:
From what I understand, this was less of a case of a girl being upset about “things going awry” than it was a case of a teenaged brat who was angry that she didn’t get her way. (See Wiglaf’s post, #14)
Yes, she won by write-in, but she was disqualified from serving in the first place. No matter how popular a man may be, if he is rendered ineligible for a public office, it doesn’t matter if the majority writes his name in. He’s still not going to be elected. In this case, whether justified or not, her tirade against the schoolboard made her claim to office illegitimate.
My second question is since when did “taking on authority” become a good thing? Obviously there are situations where unbridled authority needs to be challenged, but we should never assume that a rebellious or anarchist attitude is the “right one to have.”
I’d much rather have a civil and erudite person representing me than an immature and indignant one.
There’s a profound difference between being “beaten down and apathetic” and using due process to change or fix things we don’t like.
Two things you should never complain about are the things you can’t change, and the things you can.
Whether it’s justified, ethical, or right for schools, employers, or governments to read the blogs/personal sites of their constituents is another debate entirely. One thing is certain, however (having dealt with being harassed and/or cyberstalked because of things I’ve said in my blog): be careful what you say, especially on the internet, because nothing is as private or as personal as we might think, and you never know who’s reading.
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