Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

MySpace school lawsuit

I guess this headline should not come as a surprise. After all, we’re talking about TEENAGERS here and highly disruptive and empowering technologies when it comes to websites like MySpace. The headline is “Principal sues students, parents over MySpace page.” (Thanks Devin for the link.) Here’s an excerpt:

Anna Draker, who works at Clark High School in San Antonio, knows the kids behind the [fictitious MySpace] site well. She had been forced to discipline them several times, and was aware of their animosity to her, but apparently did not suspect the lengths to which they would go to get a bit of revenge. Ben Schreiber and Ryan Todd set up a MySpace page in Draker’s name earlier this year which “indicated by implication and by direct statement that Ms. Draker is a lesbian, which she is not.”

Furthermore, the page featured comments from other MySpace users, many of them other Clark students who knew Ms. Draker. These messages were less than complimentary. And it wasn’t just school students; “a few were individuals Ms. Draker did not recognize, that lived near Clark High School, and had made suggestive, lewd and obscene comments based on the content of the webpage.

My first response is, why didn’t the teacher or the school officials directly contact MySpace immediately when they learned about this and ask them to remove the site? Based on what I’ve read and learned about MySpace previously, I think they’d readily comply with this. Instead:

One of the teachers at Clark brought the page to Draker’s attention on April 19, 2006, and Draker claims that since then, she has had “many sleepless nights and worried days regarding this web page and the people who attempted to contact her through the web page.” The situation rattled the school administration enough that Draker’s picture was removed from the school website and a brief video about the dangers of MySpace was posted instead.

The case is significant also because of the liability issues it raises. The parents of the student are being charged with negligence, for not policing what their children were doing online at home:

What sets this case apart from many other lawsuits filed over the content of blogs is that it doesn’t target only the teenagers who created the site. It also argues that the parents were guilty of negligence by failing to supervise their children, and that they bear some of the responsibility for the defaming site. The police were able to determine that the computers used to create the site were located in the students’ homes, and Draker’s lawsuit says that the parents have a duty to know what their children are up to—especially in light of both students’ past run-ins with Draker at school.

“Allowing access to the Internet, unsupervised and without restraint poses an obvious and unreasonable danger that such children would utilize the Internet for illicit purposes such as the ones alleged above,” says the suit in accusing the parents of “negligent supervision.”

Of course this is just a lawsuit, and the court has not ruled in this case, and we need to remember that here in the good ‘ole USA basically anyone can sue anyone for anything, especially if they have the money to pay the lawyers fees. It will be interesting to track this case, however, and whether or not the judge rules in favor of the plaintiff I think the issue of parental responsibility for the online behavior of their students is an extremely important one.

I think this article raises again issues of more parental involvement needed in the lives of our young people, schools blocking DSN sites being an insufficient response, and the overall need we have to embrace SAFE and CONSTRUCTIVE uses of digital social networking tools in schools.

Are students and teachers at your school using Think.com or Imbee yet? If not, why not? If you’re not the one to suggest these ideas and carry the banner of safe DSN education forward in your own locality, who will? If no one does, what will the costs be for the students and families in your community?

The digital natives all around us WILL continue to use these tools, whether DOPA passes or not and even if all schools fill their website homepages with videos about “the dangers of MySpace” and other DSN sites. We need to confront these issues head on together through education, as well as appropriate disciplinary actions by schools. I hope in this case the students who carried out these acts of student to teacher cyberbullying are held accountable for their actions and face appropriate consequences. The fact that they did these things off the school campus and from home, of course, complicates the legal ground the school administrators can stand on in meting out disciplinary actions.

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3 responses to “MySpace school lawsuit”

  1. Brett Moller Avatar

    This is a very interesting read here Wesley. You make an excellent point about tackling these issues head on. I have written a little more in a post on my site…. http://blog.brettmoller.com/?p=170

  2. Michael Weaver Avatar

    “I think this article raises again issues of more parental involvement needed in the lives of our young people..” This is too true, unfortunately most parents look at it as it is up to the school system to educate the kids about how to appropriately use the Internet. It will be interesting to see what comes of this.

    By the way, looking forward to seeing you in Wichita Falls on the 16th.

  3. Sarah Puglisi Avatar

    Hello,
    I’m enjoying being up early reading your and others sites….feeling rather deficient over all….. after reading and seeing so much excellent work.

    I read this with a kind of laugh…though that is inappropriate I suppose.

    I’m a 1st grade teacher in an Underperforming School in Oxnard. Sometimes I think my learning comes in real fits…I have teens I gave laptops to, my two girls, and noticed they were on them a lot. Or all the time. Then I began reading my daughter (foureyedsnail.blogspot.com) or the adults allowed version with great joy at her insightful writing. Then I opened a MYSpace patethic thing to see what it was and snoop on her. Of course she knows about blocking, tracking visitors…slowly I see you really can’t snoop on her- it’s more like her snooping on mommy snooping on her. I remember in my day in a far different realm writing things in a diary just to give my mom a few shockers if she read it while keeping the real writing in a place she still hasn’t found….All in all Sylvia put a thing or two there about atheism and orientation to cause the gray hair on my head to begin to just fall out. Like mom , like daughter…Of course there too I found many thoughtful pieces….some I copied over to friends.With permission. So I searched a few of her friends but then lost interest. Too busy teaching. I went on the site three days ago which is why I’d ever comment here…and found my name in another child’s blog when I found a blog search feature. In it a student I taught years ago in some laundry list of questions(something the kids like to do) listed me as a favorite teacher. Child now living I don’t know how…a million miles away. I thought. Wow.
    So I’m thinking this is rather interesting, and see a piece written by a student long in the past involving discipline from my husband in a school site. Again somewhat like this I read a very upset kid…. My husband on hearing this said, “I’m glad the kid can write.”

    We tend to look for the silver lining.

    I’d been thinking a good bit about these shared dialogs since then…diaries online and potentials for instant communication and emotional instant communication and public communication.(and myself narcissia) I’m not sure how exactly to broach this with my daughter…she seems more savvy and aware of blocking, watching and fending than I am. At 17 she seems to have in place the kinds of practices of our home. Try not to go in someone’s purse or drawers, be invited, try to state your thoughts free of personal attack, be thoughtful, care…what shocks me especially at my age I guess is not only that someone would post bad things…but that it would have audience. But I never got that World Westleor Power Ranger’s thing either so there is plenty I don’t get including this. MySpace seemed to me from my two month experiment to have a ridiculously seedy component and sexualized negativety where interaction is reduced to base animalism…just a component but of enough concern to me as a mom I did speak to my daughter about that and insisted on proof that wasn’t going to affect her,looked at LiveJournal and since I know here-her actions , it’s not an issue except to me from a predator stand point.And maybe a bit more…I do wonder if I can practice what I preach. But I can see that parents would have very valid concerns…it’s ridiculous that at 47 with some serious decline in self I’d find myself repeatedly invited by the MySpacesite to join a live web cam to be on Long Hot Legs….and yet…there it is. I can image a teenager with time on their hands trying to debate the moral implications on that and “do the right thing” being weighed with “doing this right now”. Ah….it’s hard stuff.
    My school district in the last year has just taken a very technological place with potentials and locked it all up-no access to blogs of any kind, no access to most links, webpage only thru the clunkiest thing ever and frankly I suspect they don’t want employees anywhere near these things on their time after sensing liabilities involved as well as knowing a little freer speech when you are forcing teachers into a lock step scripted instructional model might not be very good thinking. I do note that the substitution is they bought workbooks in a can and mandated minutes to students…and as they do poorly more and more minutes are required. It would seem this is a parallel to NCLB take-over accountability conclusions…if they only would just do exactly as we say…and more of it.
    How fascinating I found your post. Thanks, Sarah Puglisi