Student Gossip Sites

An Anonymous Coward writes: "The Standard has a brief article on student Web sites and the schools that try to shut them down. The good news: it appears students prevail in court most of time." No kidding. Students have rights too.

Ah, high school.

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

The thing about a gossip website is that it's so... detached.

The traditional "underground" newspaper has a tactile, in your face, get suspended and tell the tale while on your sponsored vacation feel to it.

Unless it's aggressively marketed, this sort of thing usually doesn't get far... of course, it usually means you're the first to get called to the administrative office when some Columbine-ish thing happens five states away.

One of the few lovely things about high school is that you get a beautiful concentration of petty tyrants and no accountability on your nose-tweaking. It's this combination that's gotten many a person through to his graduation day.

--Perianwyr Stormcrow

Difference between on-campus and off- publication

[Masem]

The article refers to a significant SC ruling that schools can censor student-run newspapers that include, at some point, school resources. So the school newspaper, or a underground paper printed off site but distributed strictly in school, would fall under this ruling. However, here we are talking about web pages and such that are, for the most part, run off ISPs not related to the school, and can be accessed by anyone. These sites, since the school has no control of any part of the distribution, should be free of this SC decision, and as the article points out, this is pretty much been true. On the other hand, if the school provides student home pages, and one student uses it to have disfavorable gossip about the school, I do think the school has a right to step in and censor it, under this ruling.

Re:Ah, high school.

[don_carnage]

The problem with "real" underground newspapers is that it costs money to produce them. You have to pay for paper and the ink, right? With a webpage, your costs are pretty much taken care of.

On the other hand, there's nothing like being there to hand out newspapers and having people ask you for them in class, etc etc. I'd have to agree with you: running an underground newspaper is a very personable thing.

--

Ever Notice How

[SigVn]

That they are constantly bringing up Columbine every time that they want to shut some one down.

Scary.

Thank God I am not in highschool... It was bad enough when I was there.

We glued ours to the walls, Mao-style.

[human bean]

Our "unauthorized school tabloid" (hated that term, after all, I authorized it...) never had any attention until we "fixed" our presentation. After that, we only had to make a few copies.

Web pages don't fit as well on the wall, but certainly have improved the reach of such journalism. These kids can do a reasonable job with the tools that are now available at their level. This sort of thing has to be encouraged, as I can't afford to hire untrained sheep.

Re:Difference between on-campus and off- publicati

[Faery Jeweler]

On the other hand, if the school provides student home pages, and one student uses it to have disfavorable gossip about the school, I do think the school has a right to step in and censor it, under this ruling.

I agree with this. The high school I went to offers accounts (incl. webpages) to students who request them, but have reasonable limits on what they're allowed to put up on such a page. For example, they're not allowed to put up anything that could possibly be construed as porn. One of the teachers is required to monitor the sites that go up on the school's domain, and the whole system seems to work out rather well. There are no specific rules about defamation of the school (is that the right word?), but if a student were offending others, the supervising teacher has the right to delete the webpage or require the student to take the information off of the webpage.

However, I find it rather disturbing that schools are able to sensor what students do outside of school. If a student has a webpage that is NOT related to the school, the only one(s) who should have a say in the webpage content is the host (most of the free webservers have restrictions on what their pages can be used for, though they are not moderated too closely). Just my $.02.

Knee-jerk reactionism?

[Firefly1]

Personally, I think schools' attempts to gag these 'gossip' sites (which, if the operators are smart, were set up without any use of school resources) ridiculous. That Columbine and its ilk keep being brought up as arguments is equally ridiculous - in fact, this censorship might well fuel the next batch of shooters... and you never know, they might go chemical.