Teens Suspended for Myspace Pages Sue School
Two teen girls took sexually suggestive photos and posted them on Myspace. No surprise there. So why did the school suspend them from sports and force them to make an official apology to the school’s athletic board?
The Smith-Green Community School Corporation in Indiana has stated that as athletes the girls are representatives of the school - even when off campus. So pictures on Myspace constitute an athletic code violation.
Not so, says the ACLU, which has filed suit against both the school and its principal for violating the girls’ rights.
According to WANE-TV, the school has twenty days to respond to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court alleging the girls’ first amendment rights to free speech were violated by the school. The lawsuit describes the pictures from the girls Myspace pages - which were printed off by another student and given to the principal when school began in September.
Taken during the summer break, the pictures apparently show the girls “pretending to kiss or lick a large multi-colored novelty phallus-shaped lollipop that they had purchased as well as pictures of themselves in lingerie with dollar bills stuck in their clothes.”
Sexually suggestive? Yes. Inappropriate for sophomore girls? Ditto.
But is this a problem for the school or simply the girls’ parents? It wasn’t just off campus, it wasn’t during the school year at all. And the pictures were not actionable (the girls had clothes on) in a court of law. What’s more - the pictures were on Myspace. Although it’s the world wide web, if the pages were marked “private,” so only their friends could see them, they are not representing themselves to society as a whole.
It almost comes down to a matter of taste. If this were my kid, we’d be talking counseling (which the school ordered after the girls’ parents complained about a year-long suspension from athletic play was initially meted out as punishment). But it isn’t up to my kid’s school to determine what is sexually appropriate for my kid off campus and off the clock. Will the school now determine whether a teen girl can go trick or treating in a French maid’s costume? If she can wear a short skirt when grocery shopping with her parents?
Is the school in the wrong on this one or should the girls suffer the punishment?
Image: Myspace
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Tags: education, first amendment rights in schools, free speech, Jeanne Sager, kids right to free speech, myspace, myspace photos, schools
9 Comments
Trey commented on Nov 04 09 at 1:05 pmLet’s see…another example of schools trying to discipline inappropriate behavior, and parents enabling their children to continue to do stupid behavior.
Never mind the fact that these TEENS are doing sexually suggestive material that would alarm any normal parent.
NOPE
The fact that they were embarrassed to fess up to their actions and apologize for being “inappropriate”.
And, its more embarrassing for these “girl” teens to apologize for being sexual, than to have sexual content on a PUBLIC site?
Seriously, what kind of society are we becoming? Kudos to the school for actually stepping in where parents obviously failed to do.
Annelise commented on Nov 04 09 at 2:17 pmI’ve read many school policies that state that if inappropriate behavior is severe enough (usually violence) or if it “enters the school environment,” that the school can discipline the students for it. That means if other kids were talking about the photos at school or someone used a school computer to look at the profile and the pictures, the problem became the school’s problem.
Ri-chan commented on Nov 04 09 at 4:31 pmThe school has no right’s outside of school. Yes, I think the parents shouldn’t let their children do this, but if the parents allow it, I don’t have the right to punish and neither does the school.
Allie commented on Nov 04 09 at 4:33 pmThe school shouldn’t have anything to do with it. If they weren’t posting things to their pages during school and the photos weren’t taken on campus, the school has no business being involved. The parents should punish the kids as they see fit.
Samsmomma commented on Nov 04 09 at 11:44 pmLet me start by admitting that my child hasn’t reached school-age yet, so maybe that affects my opinion. But I just think that schools have gone crazy overstepping their boundaries. Public schools are funded by taxpayers. Taxpayers are a group that includes the girls’ parents. If the girls’ parents thought that suspending the girls from sports was an appropriate punishment, they could have done that themselves. The girls didn’t do anything illegal or on school grounds (or even explicitly break a school rule) so the school does not have any recourse. Essentially, the school is making a morality judgement and it has no right to do so. What would happen if a football player’s page had pictures of him kissing another boy? Could he be suspended from sports if the school board was homophobic? Or suppose the judge who refused to marry an interracial couple was the superintendent and there was an interracial couple at the high school. Could the couple be suspended? Of course that sounds ridiculous, but when public schools decide which behaviors are immoral (especially when conducted out of school) it becomes a slippery slope. As a parent I want to say to the schools, “Let us parents parent our children!”
What commented on Nov 05 09 at 11:48 amAllie, if these parents were parenting their children then this whole situation would never have happened in the first place. Is the school going overboard? I don’t know, when I was in high school our best athlete got caught drinking on a weekend, not during school or on school grounds, and he was removed from the track team. By the way, he was the superintendents son. Did his actions affect the school? No. But was he breaking athletic policies. Yes. Is this situation as very similar. If anything, the parents should be backing the school up, not filing a lawsuit.
maeby commented on Nov 06 09 at 8:49 am@What, are you actually a parent? You can be the best parent in the entire world to your child (no doubt you think you are) but its ultimately up to your kids to make certain decisions. every teen is going to make mistakes regardless of how well their parents parent.
this school does not own these kids. they did these pictures off of school property, on their own time, and had their profiles set to private. it was a stupid decision on their part, but the school has no right to punish them.
Lucky commented on Nov 07 09 at 2:53 pmSorry but my kids will never stay in a school that thinks it has authority over my kids in my home. They discipline at school. I discipline at home. End of story. (For the record I discipline on top of school anyway.)
Erica commented on Dec 07 09 at 9:47 pmi mean…realy it’s non of the schools buisness if the girls took it of campus it’s not like they took it in the schools bathroom i mean there over reacting…..teenagers do dumb things some times… i do to!!!!
