Student Expelled For Facebook Photo Description 415
flutterecho writes "A sophomore at Valdosta State University was expelled after criticizing his university's plan to build two new parking garages with student fees. In a letter apparently slipped under his dorm room door, Ronald Zaccari, the university's president, wrote that he 'present[ed] a clear and present danger to this campus' and referred to an image on the student's Facebook page which contained a threatening description. 'As additional evidence of the threat posed by Barnes, the document referred to a link he posted to his Facebook profile whose accompanying graphic read: "Shoot it. Upload it. Get famous. Project Spotlight is searching for the next big thing. Are you it?" It doesn't mention that Project Spotlight was an online digital video contest and that "shoot" in that context meant "record."' In a post-Virginia Tech world, has university surveillance of online identities gone too far?"
Re:VTech just kicked in, yo! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:VTech just kicked in, yo! (Score:5, Insightful)
Public University (Score:4, Insightful)
A public university is held to a different standard that a private institution in regards to being able to expel students for arbitrary and capricious reasons since public institutions are partially tax-funded. I wonder if the ACLU would like to step up to the plate on this one.
I sure the hell wouldn't want to be in any way affiliated with such an oppressive institution. After he wins his case and gets his money back, he should consider an institution that upholds certain concepts like freedom of speech and independent thinking.
don't believe anything you read in online profiles (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here's a threat (Score:3, Insightful)
Fire the President (Score:5, Insightful)
Making an Example. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Here's a threat (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, "Zaccari Memorial Parking Garage" has a certain ironic ring to it. As if the University President really thinks that in a hundred years, he will be remembered for a parking garage. It's the sort of thing that if I were a student there and immersed in this issue when seeing that sign, I would probably laugh and think "what a fool Zaccari is."
When a communication has several plausible innocent meanings, it hardly presents the threat of a clear and present danger just because someone chose to take it out of context and give it the threatening meaning. Based on TFA, Zaccari pointed to a couple things from an online profile (one of which was a mere advertisement placed there by Facebook). Who among us could not be characterized in an unfair way similarly to the way this student was characterized?
Re:Solidarity with this students (Score:1, Insightful)
What to do... (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't know all the details, but I probably wouldn't buy their argument that the student threatened them. The college might not simply like what they have to say, so they do their best to exaggerate something in order to have grounds for expulsion. Schools don't like it when students challenge their spending habits, or so I think.
I don't even understand the V tech reason here.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Taking that into consideration I have a hard time believing the president acted in the best interest of the university whether Barnes was a threat or not.
What's really interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
University administrators looking at students' public facebook pages is perhaps a bit odd, but for administrators to have access to counselling records and private medical records seems like a far more important invasion of privacy to me.
This case demonstrates why privacy of medical records is so important - you complain about a car park being built and a paper-pusher with an axe to grind accesses your medical records and paints you as a madman if you ever set foot in a psychologist's office.
No denial (Score:3, Insightful)
As the student in this case is politically active, he is probably much more likely to grab an opportunity to defend himself, rather than go for denial.
Anyone missing the big picture? (Score:5, Insightful)
Privacy?? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not a privacy issue, it's an issue of the university overreacting in a way that I'm sure would be inconsistent with their code of conduct. If it's not, then the student needs to bring suit and talk to his student union about policy changes.
Re:online identity (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Maybe, maybe not (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Public University (Score:1, Insightful)
Do they hire dropouts from the street for administration positions or do they simply seek out the stupidest people they can find? As it is incredibly obvious that this man is stupid, retarded, or lacking even a 3rd grade education.
This makes me question the value of college education credentials.
Re:Airport security (Score:5, Insightful)
the second i read that i knew what it meant (considering it was called "project spotlight"). if a university president can't understand that it means take a picture with a camera, then he probably doesn't deserve his position to begin with.
the president wanted to shut this kid up. gave the false notion that he would go to therapy and when approved be allowed back in. when the kid went through therapy with flying colors and didn't shut up about the parking garages, the president did a 180 and wouldn't allow the student back.
what the kid should really be looking into is the school's counselor who violated their professional obligation to not share information about their clients except in extenuating circumstances (such as the client admitting to murder). however, fearing for his/her job when the president met with him/her, i'm sure he/she just crumbled under pressure and said whatever the president wanted to hear.
What is the effect on others ? (Score:5, Insightful)
What this sort of thing does is to generate adults who keep their heads down and won't make negative comments no matter what the government, their employer, ... does. This means that the few who run the country/company/... can commit outrageous acts and get away with it because the population is too scared to complain.
It is just this sort of mentality that lets the government get away with some of the huge restrictions of freedom that it is imposing.
This sort of thinking is what kills democracy.
I am talking about the USA here, but I am a Brit and can see this sort of thing will also happen here... where our government ignores us and the law anyway.
Re:Maybe, maybe not (Score:5, Insightful)
Had this been a private school, he would have had utterly no recourse: expulsion at will for any reason, even none at all, is one of the perks (if you're an administrator) of being at a private school.
Post-Virginia Tech world (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Facebook or Foolbook? (Score:3, Insightful)
However, this particular case at Valdosta is irrelevant and ridiculous, seeing as the content was totally innocuous.
Re:Public University (Score:5, Insightful)
The next link down on the site is a good example. An student took some courses at a community college, and ended up with a shitty professor. When he dropped the class, he emailed his classmates and asked if any wanted to take the course with him at another school. So the college charged him with "hazing, disorderly conduct, breach of the peace, and failure to comply with directions of a college official". The first he heard of it was when he was notified that he'd been found guilty. When he tried to appeal, he found out that appeals are reviewed by the same staffer who makes the rulings in the first place. Later, when FIRE came to his defense and it became a national story, the college dropped the charges, then quietly reinstated them based on brand new accusations of disruptions in class-- charges much harder for him to defend himself against because then it's a he-said, she-said situation.
Colleges do this kind of stuff all the time. Even their so-called "judicial" processes are designed to look good on paper but completely betray the principles they teach in class.
Many years ago, I served with the student judicial committee in the university I was at at the time. They regularly practiced all kinds of shenanigans; their favorite trick was to have an administrator come in after we'd gone into deliberations to present new evidence that only we would know about and that the accused wasn't even aware of. I never said a word about it at the time because it just didn't occur to me how unfair the system was. Since then, I've become deeply ashamed at my lack of judgment. The student chairman, who played along with the administration's tactics as well, went on to become a researcher specializing in civil liberties.
Sleep well....
In a post-[Event X] world... (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple of days ago I posted a comment against the constant references to 9/11 [slashdot.org] being used to justify or explain things that have very little to do with preventing terrorism or other terrible event, and this is another example, and the shame this time is that it's a comment from a
In a post-Virginia Tech world, has university surveillance of online identities gone too far?"
What has Virginia Tech got to do with university surveillance, ever? Seung-Hui Cho was well known on campus for being weird, handing in obviously violently disturbed plays for class assignments, and even writing a story about a school shooting which the university was aware of. Now I know that what one writes is not neccessarily a reflection of what one intends to do, but it's not like anyone needed to spy on Seung-Hui's Facebook page, if indeed he had one, to see that he had serious issues going on - his social problems were far more severe than some kid writing a comment about his teacher building a parking garage, and were being waved in the face of his tutors for more than a year before the horrendous act took place.
Re:More fuel for the fire (Score:3, Insightful)
- RG>
Re:VTech just kicked in, yo! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Public University (Score:4, Insightful)
The ACLU often comes to the defense of religious expression and of conservative political speech [google.com].
This idea of academic political bias is based on deliberately slanted "research" [prospect.org], from the sort of priviledged conservatives who, for some bizarre reason, like to view themselves as a persecuted minority. (I suppose it has its roots in the sort of twisted, martyrdom-centered Christianity they tend to practice.)
But even though most of the far right's whining about "liberal bias" in education is based on restricting their surveys of academics' party affiliations to the women's studies department, perhaps there is an inherent bias. After all, academic institutions tend to carry a bias toward knowledge, while the contemporary conservative movement continually allies itself with ignorance.
Re:VTech just kicked in, yo! (Score:3, Insightful)
Sunlight is the thing colleges fear the most, because it will show them to be gulags where freedom is only a faint notion.
This is extremely fishy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sometimes you see this sort of petty thuggery by corrupt small-town public officials (or College Republicans), but they usually don't ascend much higher than that. Their careers are self-limiting because once they rise to the level where their behavior is subjected to the slightest scrutiny, they scurry like cockroaches from the light.
Re:Maybe, maybe not (Score:3, Insightful)
If I'm shouting condemnation against George Bush, Bush has absolutely no right to suppress me. But you're entirely within rights to yell at me "either shut up or get off my lawn!"
The Bill of Rights is a prohibition on what the government or its functionaries may do. It has absolutely nothing to say about what private citizens or groups can do.
Didn't we have a revolution to kick you guys out? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a *degree* you receive after you've already *graduated* from college. I see nothing redundant or ambiguous (which are contradictory!) about it. If it was redundant, you could remove part and it would retain its meaning, but that's obviously not true here. If it was ambiguous, we wouldn't know what one meant by it, but that's obviously not true here either.
"Hopes of appearing authentic"? Damn, you're even more full of yourselves than usual. First of all, I don't know that any American university (short of a couple of the more elitist Ivies) thinks that being British makes them "authentic". Second, *every* university I've ever visited had colleges. For example, the University of Washington (definitely not in the Ivy League) has a College of Arts and Sciences, a College of Engineering, a College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and so on. It's not unique to the Ivies or British-kiss-ass-colleges or anywhere else.
Meh. I kind of like freedom of association. Are you old enough to remember the 1970's? Did you guys like having the top tax bracket be 98%? No wonder you are so proud of your ancient schools; between the funding and the rules and the taxes, nobody can ever afford to start a new one.
Under the current set of laws, it seems to be a meaningless concept in America. The article spells out that "age of license" (which varies by activity) is what actually determines what you're allowed to do. It even claims that "Age of majority pertains solely to the acquisition of control over one's person", and yet, consuming alcohol isn't granted by majority, even though it seems to be purely a matter of "control over one's person". (Tobacco has a younger age of license, and other drugs are never allowed.) Age of majority is the "legal recognition that one has grown into an adult", but apparently this "recognition" is completely independent of any actual things you may do.
The home of Cockney rhyming slang is accusing *us* of being confusing? What cheek.
It's great when the English visit American webpages and then presume to tell us how we're using the language all wrong. No wait, the other thing. Tedious.
Re:Public University (Score:2, Insightful)
First, the idea that one incident refutes or proves anything about trends in bias is ridiculous. Second, what actions? A bunch of people did a bunch of stuff during that farce. The primary enablers of the hoaxer were Nifong and the Durham Police Department, who were not affiliated with the university. And I note that DAs and cops are not known for liberal bias.
Yes, there's bias. Don't make a big deal out of it (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea that discourse on elite campuses is a nontrivial degree to the left of discourse in the nation as a whole is not born out of some study -- sound or not -- it is a pretty obvious fact about college campuses that anyone who had attends a prestigious university notices. It may not be as extreme as some think-tank neocons think, and it certainly isn't as alarming as the David Horowitzes of the world think, but there is a definite tilt. I don't think there's much to the old liberal media bias trope, but on campuses, there is definitely not a equal mix of liberal and conservative advocates.
And why would there be? People who can afford to compete for spots at the top schools are more likely to belong to a social class that is more liberal. Students at a campus are likely to be people of an age where many people are at their most liberal. The current crop of specialty academic departments are more likely to interest liberals. Beyond that, staying in school long enough to become a professor means you've thrived in a liberal environment for long enough.
But so what? That doesn't stop conservatives from getting a good education. And there is little evidence that liberal academia hurts the conservative movement or its ideas -- maybe even the opposite.
And who cares about an entire university faculty's party preferences, really? A lot of profs are scientists, whose ideology matters very little, and who usually average out to be center-left moderates, like many people in their social class. That the Woman's Studies department is overwhelmingly leftist doesn't matter that much to me. You know that going in and you avoid the department if that sort of thing bothers you.
All that really matters is that students learn how to think critically, do their own research, and write their ideas well. As long as you learn how to learn, you'll be okay even if what you learned wasn't ever so perfectly balanced.
Some countries... (Score:3, Insightful)
Some companies employ complete morons who can't read, so explain how being fired is such a bad thing.
Some insurance companies employ complete morons who can't read, so explain how losing your insurance is such a bad thing.
Re:Public University (Score:2, Insightful)
"Being open minded, tolerant, and free thinking in no way implies an obligation to not respond to stupid, close-minded, or intolerant expression."
The stupid, closed minded, intolerant expression, from what I saw, was all coming from the students.
You could say it was a bit of the pot calling the kettle black, but from what I saw, the religious "nuts" were the sane, open minded, calm, tolerant ones, and the liberal students were filled with venom and spite. They were incensed that the religious nuts even existed, let alone were on campus.