I remember a few of years ago, a student named Jake Baker at the University of Michigan wrote piece of erotic fiction on USENET (alt.sex.stories?) that described acts of rape, sexual torture, and murder of a classmate, who was mentioned by name.
He had prepended a disclaimer to his work (mentioning that it contained "lots of sick stuff") and he put his real name on the postings.
When the University was informed of the postings from an alumnus who is an attorney in Moscow (!!!), he was dismissed from the University. The 6th Circuit court of appeals affirmed the dismissal.
Now... the case that Jon sites is different in that this was schoolwork that the 7th grader wrote, but the similarity was that people were mentioned by name.
I agree with Jon's sentiments that students should have freedom of speech and press (which applies here? I'm not a lawyer.). However, the University of Michigan case is a precedent that has already undergone appeal in federal court that states that such writings COULD and ARE considered threatening.
Jake's story was posted to one of the alt.sex groups in early 1995. This was way before the Columbine killings. Instead of seeing an increased panic among school administrators, I see continuity from what they were doing four years ago.
Now... I do not for one minute believe that either Christopher Beamon or Jake Baker meant to threaten anybody by their writings. However, there is still a precedent that considers these writings as threatening and should be punished.
For this reason, I think Jon is jumping the gun here in saying that this has anything to do with the Columbine shootings or the perceived "anti-geek" attitudes that were mentioned in the previous "Hellmouth" stories.
Maybe, just maybe, those shootings made school administrators more willing to take quick action.
Nevertheless, I do not agree with the disposition of either Jake Baker's case, nor with Chris Beamon's.
I think that if schools are going to prosecute people for such things, then there should be a clear policy explained to all the students; the ground rules must be made clear if we are to try to avoid such things that may upset other students or their parents. If a school has such rules, they should be published and placed under the scrutiny of the public. If they are too draconian, allow them to be challenged by the parents, teachers, or students... even the ACLU.
Otherwise, I can see this being a precedent for yet another case, where a five year old says to another student "Come back here! I'll kill you!" and gets expelled.
This is NOT from the Hellmouth, Jon... (Score:4)
He had prepended a disclaimer to his work (mentioning that it contained "lots of sick stuff") and he put his real name on the postings.
When the University was informed of the postings from an alumnus who is an attorney in Moscow (!!!), he was dismissed from the University. The 6th Circuit court of appeals affirmed the dismissal.
Now... the case that Jon sites is different in that this was schoolwork that the 7th grader wrote, but the similarity was that people were mentioned by name.
I agree with Jon's sentiments that students should have freedom of speech and press (which applies here? I'm not a lawyer.). However, the University of Michigan case is a precedent that has already undergone appeal in federal court that states that such writings COULD and ARE considered threatening.
Jake's story was posted to one of the alt.sex groups in early 1995. This was way before the Columbine killings. Instead of seeing an increased panic among school administrators, I see continuity from what they were doing four years ago.
Now... I do not for one minute believe that either Christopher Beamon or Jake Baker meant to threaten anybody by their writings. However, there is still a precedent that considers these writings as threatening and should be punished.
For this reason, I think Jon is jumping the gun here in saying that this has anything to do with the Columbine shootings or the perceived "anti-geek" attitudes that were mentioned in the previous "Hellmouth" stories.
Maybe, just maybe, those shootings made school administrators more willing to take quick action.
Nevertheless, I do not agree with the disposition of either Jake Baker's case, nor with Chris Beamon's.
I think that if schools are going to prosecute people for such things, then there should be a clear policy explained to all the students; the ground rules must be made clear if we are to try to avoid such things that may upset other students or their parents. If a school has such rules, they should be published and placed under the scrutiny of the public. If they are too draconian, allow them to be challenged by the parents, teachers, or students... even the ACLU.
Otherwise, I can see this being a precedent for yet another case, where a five year old says to another student "Come back here! I'll kill you!" and gets expelled.
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