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?"
VTech just kicked in, yo! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:VTech just kicked in, yo! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Why is that news? Maybe sections with a counter in each, such as "$UNIVERSITY expels $STUDENT for reason $STUPID" would do it, with an index that links to each relevant article. Good idea for a web 2.0 news site, that.
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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.
So Web 2.0...? (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:VTech just kicked in, yo! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:VTech just kicked in, yo! (Score:5, Funny)
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Sunlight is the thing colleges fear the most, because it will show them to be gulags where freedom is only a faint notion.
Re:VTech just kicked in, yo! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Almost all Uni's in Australia are government funded, and an attitude to free speech that is at least not as bad as that. I've taught at one of the Top-8 Uni's for quite a while (and was a student for more years than I care to remember), and find your story very hard to believe. You're way past the HECS census date (not that that should count for much over something so trivial), and they kick you out for criticising the toilets? Talk to your student union (what's left of them th
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Re:VTech just kicked in, yo! (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite. There's a bit of a language gap here, so bear with me:
1) The sort of higher-education institution one attends between the ages of ~18 and ~21 is referred to as a "University" everywhere on the planet apart from the US, where a "College" is where one studies toward an undergraduate degree. Most US "Colleges" are also referred to as "Universities" because they also grant Post-Graduate degrees (also referred to as "graduate degrees" in the US, although you can easily see why this phrase is redundant and ambiguous).
2) "College" in the UK most typically refers to a school attended between the ages of 16 and 18 to prepare/qualify students for study at a university, typically by taking A-Levels (similar to AP in the US, but a bit more sane). The UK's structure of what Americans refer to "High School" can be complicated, varies by geographic locale, although this term generally holds true. "Honors" programs at American High Schools that take place in the Junior/Senior years are somewhat comparable. Much of this terminology has crossed over into Australia, and many private 4-year "High Schools" call themselves colleges. Professional/vocational schools are also typically referred to as a "college," which is somewhat consistent with US usage.
3) To add to the confusion, some smaller tertiary schools in Australia do call themselves colleges. This most likely arises from the original definition of the word "college" as "a group of colleagues". The US's beloved Electoral College is an example of this. Likewise, old large Universities in the UK such as Oxford, St Andrews, and Cambridge are subdivided into smaller "colleges". Much of the Ivy League has adopted a similar system in the hopes of appearing authentic.
4) Generally speaking, the head of any educational institution in the UK is referred to as the "Principal", including both Universities, and primary and secondary schools. This term applies in virtually all of the Commonwealth countries (ie. all of the former British colonies apart from the US)
5) Virtually all universities in the UK and Australia are publicly funded (as they should be!). They are not necessarily under direct governmental oversight, but would almost certainly be subject to large monetary penalties for such an egregious violation of the law.
6) "Legal Adulthood" is not granted at the age of 18 around the world, as you would imply it is. It's not even defined at the age of 18 in the US, and falls under state jurisdiction. Although the age *is* 18 in Australia, England, and Wales, it's 16 in Scotland. In the US, various states have passed legislation to restrict the legal rights of its citizens by either raising the age to 19, 21, or making legal adulthood contingent upon graduating High School. This article [wikipedia.org] on the subject should be enlightening.
Hope that clears up any confusion floating around..... silly Americans for tweaking their language and measurement systems to make them incompatible with the rest of the English-speaking world.....
Would you like chips with that?
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First off, there's kindergarten, which can be taken at the age of 4, and usually has to be taken when you're 5. Then elementary school starts at grade 1 when a kid is 6 (so long as he's six by the end of the year, not the school year). This goes up to grade 6. Then there's a kind of junior high in grades 7 and 8. Then high school f
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As a further complication, here in BC we have "university-colleges". These are colleges that have been upgraded to offer 4-year degrees under the aegis of a full university. They differ from universities in that they don't have their own charter as universities.
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Also, American English is closer to original Shakespearean usage:
In some ways, American English is more like the English of Shakespeare than modern British English is. Some expressions that the British call "Americanisms" are in fact original British expressions that were preserved in the colonies while lost for a time in Britain (for example trash for rubbish, loan as a verb instead of lend, and fall for autumn; another example, frame-up, was re-imported into Britain through Hollywood gangster movies).
It's you guys that screwed up our beautiful language ;)
Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
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The head of primary and secondary schools in the UK is known as the "head teacher", commonly shortened to "head". I have yet to hear the term "principal" here - having been through a number of UK schools myself, w
Relevant Case Law (Score:5, Informative)
42 U.S.C. Section 1983
Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress...
http://www.peoples-law.org/individual-rts/civil-rights/1983_exactwords.htm [peoples-law.org]
Dwyer v. Oceanport School District
School officials will pay a former student $117,500 to settle a lawsuit he filed claiming his First Amendment rights were violated after administrators punished him for material posted on his Web site.
http://www.splc.org/newsflash.asp?id=1126 [splc.org]
Beidler v. North Thurston Sch. Dist
A superior court judge ruled in July that the North Thurston County School District violated the constitutional rights of a student who was suspended for ridiculing a school administrator on his personal Web site. In late January 1999, the school principal placed Beidler on "emergency expulsion." According to Beidler, the principal told him some teachers said they felt uncomfortable about having Beidler in their classes due to the content of his website. The principal also testified that he found the website "personally appalling" and "real inappropriate. On July 18, 2000, a Washington trial court judge granted summary judgment to Beidler on his First Amendment claims. The judge first noted that the First Amendment rights of public school students remain constant even in the age of the Internet. "Today the first amendment protects student speech to the same extent as in 1979 or 1969, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Tinker."
http://www.splc.org/report_detail.asp?id=448&edition=4 [splc.org]
Flaherty v. Keystone Oaks Sch. District
A local school district has agreed to pay $60,000 in partial settlement of lawsuit brought by a former student who was kicked off the volleyball team because he posted an Internet message criticizing an art teacher, the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania announced today.
http://www.aclu.org/privacy/speech/15185prs20021118.html [aclu.org]
O'Brien v. Westlake City Schools Board of Education
Sean O'Brien, while a sixteen-year-old junior at Westlake High School, created a website in March 1998 that lampooned his band teacher Raymond Walczuk. His web page "raymondsucks.org" contained several unflattering comments about Walczuk. School officials settled with O'Brien by agreeing to pay him $30,000, expunging the suspension from his record and writing a letter of apology
http://www.freedomforum.org/packages/first/censorshipinternetspeech/part3.htm [freedomforum.org]
Beussink v. Woodland R-IV School District
Brandon Beussink, then a junior at Woodland High School, created his own homepage on his own computer at his own home. The homepage was "highly critical" of the school administration and included vulgar language in his opinions of teachers and the principal. The principal initially suspended Beussink for five days because he was offended by the content on the site, and he later extended the suspension to ten days. "Disliking or being upset by the content of a student's speech is not an acceptable justification for limiting student speech under Tinker," the judge wrote.
http://www.freedomforum.org/packages/first/censorshipinternetspeech/part3.htm [freedomforum.org]
Mahaffey v. Aldrich
An unpublished decis
Maybe, maybe not (Score:5, Funny)
Lawsuit waiting to happen. I hope they've got a healthy endowment.
Like me.
(I'm sorry, I had to add that last bit. Yes, it's Sunday morning, but it was low-hanging fruit... Like mine. OK, I'll quit now.)
Re:Maybe, maybe not (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Not only that, but the university most likely receives an enormous amount of federal funds.
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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.
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However, private citizens/groups aren't allowed to skirt the laws by printing a statement to that effect in a handbook, similar to the manner in which EULA tend not to hold up in court, even though "the customer agreed to it".
If the contract for your job states "we can fire you for any reason", and you're fired on the grounds of race or gender, the company would most likely be found guilty in a wrongful termination lawsuit.
In terms of free speech, things start to get hazy w
Streisand effect (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Streisand effect (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Streisand effect (Score:5, Funny)
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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.
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....
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.
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
Re:Public University (Score:5, Informative)
From the parent:
It seems that Valdosta State does have an understanding of free speech, though.
From the article:
Truly, an enlightened institution.
Banzaiii (Score:2)
Otherwise he would have shipped straight to guantanamo resort with all that evidence he is a suicide bomber.
don't believe anything you read in online profiles (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Airport security (Score:5, Funny)
"We're here to shoot a pilot."
Hilarity ensues.
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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.
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An incident I'll never forget is when someone was in front of me for an interview with company X, talking to the receptionist about
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"HI JACK!"
(Joke taken from Scott Adams' Dilbert)
Here's a threat (Score:5, Funny)
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This suggests to me there's a generational difference in the connotation of "memorial".
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?
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If you see a Jefferson Memorial High School, do you think that Jefferson is being remembered for that school? No, he's remembered for all the amazing things he accomplished while alive and the school was named after him to help remind people that he did them.
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Well, if you RTFA, one could infer that referring to the garage as the Zaccari Memorial Parking Garage could be construed as threatening to university president Zaccari.
1. That's pretty weak.
2. If you really think someone is making death threats, you don't send them a letter expelling them ("that'll stop him killing me!"). You call the police.
It's pretty obvious that the university officials are being disingenuous here. I'm quite happy to assume stupidity rather than malice in most cases but there are limits.
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The problem with choosing stupidity over malice is that the old catchphrase assumes it can never be both.
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Cheers,
Nathan
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Shooting shootings as a pretext... (Score:5, Interesting)
It was easy to call bullshit, since we already had a system for that. More to the point, using people's fear of a lunatic going on a shooting rampage to justify ludicrous measures like my school's TV's or this George school expelling this student is a disgrace.
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I wonder if someone turning these stupid advertisement pumps off via a http://www.tvbgone.com [tvbgone.com] device would be changed with disabling emergency communications equipment and expelled. They are easy enough to hide though, and like the typical threat of expulsion keeping people out of the steam tunnels, I'm sure it could become a popular pastime to use such devices.
some might even find it fun...
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They should use the money to institute a new required course--Apostrophes for Idiots.
Probably they'd have to spell it "Apostrophe's for Idiot's", otherwise nobody would know what it i's.
Fire the President (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fire the President (Score:4, Informative)
University Contact Information (Score:5, Interesting)
president@valdosta.edu [mailto]
University Relations:
jltanner@valdosta.edu [mailto]
Address:
1500, N Patterson St. Valdosta, GA 31698 [google.com]
Telephone
+1 229-333-5800
or 800-618-1878
For your well reasoned & thought out responses.
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Re:University Contact Information (Score:5, Informative)
It may be more effective to contact the Board of Regents at this point.
Office of the Chancellor
Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia
Suite 7025
270 Washington Street, SW
Atlanta, GA 30334
office: (404) 656-2202
fax: (404) 657-6979
email: chancellor@usg.edu
http://www.usg.edu/contact/ [usg.edu]
http://www.usg.edu/regents/members/ [usg.edu]
Join my Facebook group @ http://kennesaw.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6371166090 [facebook.com]
The story about the lawsuit has been heard across Georgia. Newspapers from Valdosta, Augusta, and Athens are reporting on the case. It's been discussed on television, radio, and Internet blogs. Prominent education journal "Inside Higher Ed" featured it on their front page.
http://mashable.com/2008/01/13/facebook-users-photo-led-to-expulsion-from-university/ [mashable.com]
http://www.splc.org/newsflash.asp?id=1664 [splc.org]
http://www.courthousenews.com/2008/01/10/Valdosta_State_Student_Says_Facebook_Opinion_Resulted_in_Expulsion_From_School.htm [courthousenews.com]
http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/011208/news_20080112030.shtml [onlineathens.com]
http://www.valdostadailytimes.com/local/local_story_011142725.html [valdostadailytimes.com]
http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/8794.html [thefire.org]
http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/8796.html [thefire.org]
http://www.walb.com/Global/story.asp?S=7612384 [walb.com]
Making an Example. (Score:3, Insightful)
More fuel for the fire (Score:5, Interesting)
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- RG>
"Privacy"? (Score:2)
It's clear that the university president is an asshole, but what the hell has this to do with privacy? Perhaps you meant to type "freedom of speech"?
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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.
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Re:What's really interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW: the IT department wasraided... (Score:4, Funny)
Media War (Score:4, Interesting)
Since the school has expelled them with the explicit reason that "shooting video to publish is a 'clear and present danger to the school'", but it isn't, they should have an easy case to win. Which is a direct hit to the school, and will probably sink their parking garage battleship once the ongoing story gets back into the media. Because if the mass media loves one thing these days, it's seeing new people making news content for free that it can circulate to pad its ads, especially if the story is about the power of the media.
"VTech backlash" by cowardly schools is ugly. But the backlash to that backlash, if brought by brave students, should decimate that enemy.
Public Records (Score:2)
Anyone missing the big picture? (Score:5, Insightful)
This kind of thing happens at lots of schools. (Score:5, Interesting)
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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.
Facebook or Foolbook? (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe I'm too old to understand, but back in the '70s when when a doper bragged about lost weekends the bragging wasn't recorded.
Friends don't let friends post on Facebook.
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However, this particular case at Valdosta is irrelevant and ridiculous, seeing as the content was totally innocuous.
The democratization of the double-life. (Score:3, Interesting)
Most of the population didn't have this concern, and this was, in fact, one of the consolations of a life of obscurity that most of us lead: that we had a certain freedom to do and say what we think without re
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Sure, and that would be justified if this was a case of that, but it's not. The kid wasn't even expelled because of anything on his profile. He was expelled because an ad that Facebook displayed with his profi
Now that's well thought out plan... (Score:2)
It should be interesting to see what the setllement amount is going to be.
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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.
Obviously (Score:2)
Meaningless article (Score:2)
It's impossible to know what's going on in the minds of the administrators without reading the comments that this fellow posted -- did he simply criticize, or did he threaten? Is is a person of conscience, or a lunatic?
The only info we're given is extremely vague. If the school officials were really over-reacting, it should be obvious from the comments. So where are they?
I smell sensationalist journalism...
Post-Virginia Tech world (Score:5, Insightful)
Too far? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it really relevant here? Someone in the school administration wanted to silence a single student who raised awareness about a project that was pissing away a significant amount of student money. So they went out, found a flimsy, bullshit excuse and ran with it.
It isn't a matter of active and sustained surveillance of students - it's the matter of a administrator (or one of his minions) doing something stupid that will cost the school quite a few bucks in legal fees and the upcoming settlement in order to protect one of his pet projects.
We all know politics in the real world has pork and corruption, but the academic world takes it a step further in some cases. When you factor in the effect of tenure, it can get ugly very quickly, especially if the tenured employees feel threatened.
Quaint notions such as "the law" are ignored - primarily because even though their actions put the school at legal jeopardy, the actual employee really is unaffected.
Besides, college students aren't really known for their ability to retain lawyers easily.
I speak with some authority, since I was VP of student government and finance director PCC Sylvania. I've spent a few years in student government and suffice it to say, I've seen a few things.
For a bit of background, PCC Sylvania is a campus w/ ~24,000 students. Roughly 86,000 students currently attend PCC's multiple campuses, making it one of the largest schools in terms of enrollment in the USA.
Granted, PCC isn't a university, but from what I've seen, student fees are handled in more or less the same manner at any school.
Student government didn't get all the student fees - a significant portion of the collected fees went to projects run by (factions in the) administration and only a few percent trickled down and could be spent by the elected student government.
I'm not going to say it was all wasted, but I can completely understand how people can get pissed at how large portions (5-6 figures, year after year) of it were spent.
What can you really expect? After all, you are talking about a funding source that is essentially guaranteed, with virtually no oversight and run / spent by tenured administrators / professors. You're going to have corruption, you're going to have abuses of power and this is really nothing new.
The only thing different here is that it made the papers because even though this type of arbitrary expulsion isn't exactly new (it has been on the rise for the last few years - it's not a result of Virginia Tech), it still makes a fairly good story, especially with the "early departure".
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.
Yet again, the kids loose because of the idiots (Score:2, Interesting)
The real question is not this one : (Score:2)
and the answer is yes. this university name should be well published so that everyone will know what quality its administration is, and act accordingly.
30,000,000 (Score:2)
Do not forget that the student was expelled as a side effect of his protest against the new 30M dollar garage to be built with the student tuition money. I wonder if his protest against this construction was the real reason for the administrative action?
Important facts missing from summary (Score:3, Funny)
2. Georgia borders both Alabama and Florida.
This should help to explain things a little better.
Cool. (Score:3, Interesting)
Fuck em. Noise violation? Maybe they meant that they were raising the noise
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: (Score:2, Informative)
If anyone is interested in avoiding schools that trample on student's rights to free speech, there is a watchdog group that maintains a list of such institutions. http://www.thefire.org/ [thefire.org]