Fifty-two posts too slow.
I agree. To follow up on my previous post, in matters of bullying and discrimination all things matter, big and small, because they add up to a hostile and unwelcoming environment that has the potential to affect a person’s self-image and mental health with serious consequences when they are at a vulnerable age in their formative years, and potentially even jeopardize their safety. Moreover, the social phenomenon of peer reinforcement can cause small acts of hostility, if left unchecked, to encourage much more serious ones. Both of those are part of the rationale for zero tolerance in bullying.
Punishments should nevertheless be proportional to the seriousness of the offense, and there’s a reasonable debate to be had here about what the appropriate punishment should have been for these students, but I see no reasonable debate about whether they should have been punished at all, based on some bullshit argument about free speech.
The TInker decision is from the US Supreme Court, which supersedes lower or circuit court decisions.
So you are correct - the principal does not have to follow my interpretation. He has to follow the Supreme Court’s interpretation. So either you need to show how the Supreme Court did not find that students’ free speech rights should be respected unless they interfere with the educational mission of the school, or else show how hitting Like interferes with that mission in some way - off campus, not involving any school functions or equipment. If neither can be done, then the principal is, in fact, in violation of the law.
Regards,
Shodan
The problem with this analysis is, of course, the slippery slope (and in the case of adding draconian punishments to hitting “like” to something hateful, the slope ain’t all that slippery).
For example - I think you would agree with me that misogyny is at least as pervasive and significant a problem as homophobia - perhaps even moreso. You would probably also agree that a message that consisted of approval for violence against women, and describing of women in negative terms (like words that essentially mean “prostitute” or “bitch”) creates an atmosphere of violence and victimization.
So why not suspend all students who “like” music containing such themes? After all all of them matter.
And why stop there? Plenty of feminist scholars have made the case that the viewing of pornography contributes to misogyny. So let’s suspend all teenagers who have ever viewed or “liked” pornographic images. After all, it doesn’t matter if the viewing and liking takes place in school or not - it all contributes.
Eventually, both of the students left in your school will be assured of a completely hassle-free and accepting environment. 
Alternatively, we can take a more nuanced approach and only disclipline for stuff that, like, actually “disrupts” school activities, and leave off nannying the nasty shit kids do on their own time if it doesn’t.
There’s no “slope” here. It’s an explicit message of hate, unless you have a genuinely credible alternative explanation for what “like” means in that context.
And in your world, a three-day suspension is “draconian”?
Except that your analogies involve an absurd amount of subjective interpretation and/or cherry-picking, suggesting that if my argument is accepted, then any teenager found in possession of a copy of Playboy must be a woman-hater and future wife-beater. I think the evidence would show otherwise.
No, one deals with homophobia and misogyny by addressing direct expressions of it, which is the case here. A direct expression of misogyny was the case in this incident, which was properly dealt with without any bullshit about “free speech” or “nannying”.
You can call it “nannying” if it makes you feel better, but education in the broadest sense of the word is the fundamental purpose of schools. And even beyond that, protecting the well-being of their students is surely an indisputable responsibility. I don’t take the risk of teen suicides to be a frivolous matter, and they happen. They happen even when schools try to be vigilant. I don’t consider the three-day suspension of some hateful jackasses to be too great a price to pay in the quest for safer schools and a better society, or any kind of threat to liberty.
To: Jimmy Jerkass
From: Timothy Tightass, Principal, Michael Brown Memorial High School
Dear Jimmy:
It has come to our attention that, on or around April 1, 2015, while attending a party at the home of Miss Melanie Goodmelons, someone told an offensive and homophobic joke about prison rape. It has been reliably reported that you laughed at that joke.
Such incidents create a disturbance in the Force, and contribute to an atmosphere of bullying and intolerance, and causes every homosexual within a fifty yard radius to require expensive, school-supplied self-esteem therapy. The district cannot afford this, and therefore must take decisive action. Accordingly -
[ul][li]You are suspended for three days. [/li][li]You will, within thirty days, complete a course of attitude re-education at the Michael Foucault School of Political Correctness and Whale Songs. [/li][li]Attached please find a list of approved jokes, gags, humorous remarks, and Facebook posts that you may laugh at. If you wish to laugh, or otherwise express approval of any sort, towards another topic or joke, please fill out form 1132-C/922 in duplicate and have it signed by at least two teachers.[/ul][/li]I hope you accept this constructive criticism in the spirit it is offered.
Regards,
Principal Tightass
I’m not defending the statement in question at all. It isn’t necessary to pin this discipline as unwarranted.
The “slope” (and it ain’t much of a “slope”, more of a “level”) is that kids “like” all sorts of stuff one could reasonably find “hateful” - and if discipline was imposed impartially and consistently (as it ought to be), this would result in many, many kids being disciplined.
And a three-day suspension is excessively “draconian”. According to the actual code of the school district, which others have been kind enough to look up upthread, it is a punishment reserved for bad behaviour that actually has an impact on health or safety.
“Liking” a hateful message cannot remotely qualify. It is, im legal language, “too remote”.
Really? Have you actually listened to some popular music out there, or viewed some of the porn kids could easily find on the 'net?
Goes slightly beyond “a copy of Playboy”, as your straw-manning of the argument puts it.
Of course, if you think such imagry isn’t hateful, that’s up to you; I’ll simply point out that many would disagree.
“Liking” such imagry is exactly as much a “direct expression” as “liking” the message here.
The snarky response to this would be “I don’t take the rape of women as a frivolous matter, and it happens”. That is, if I wanted to follow your pattern of argument - implying that any who disagree with you simply don’t care about these things. “Won’t someone think of the children?” seems to be the rallying-cry to justify any sort of extreme “zero tollerance” policy, by right or left, and always justified by the same logical fallacy - the excluded middle. As in “if you don’t agree with me, you must not care about drug addiction/teen pregnacy/rape/suicide”.
The less snarky answer would be to point out that someone could agree with you that bullying and homophobia are bad, bad things, as is misogyny and racism, without thereby agreeing that your “zero tolerance” approach is either appropriate or sensible. Or for that matter capable of being applied consistently (without denuding schools of students).
OK, let me wrap it up this way: Obviously we disagree on whether the actions in question merit punishment; there are posters here who believe the students deserved at least the punishment they got if not more, and there are those who agree with you that the actions were not sufficiently harmful. I would ask you then, in the case of uncertainty and honest disagreement, what the downsides and upsides of the two courses of action would be. Who might be hurt and by how much if the students received three-day suspensions, versus who might be hurt and by how much, either immediately or way down the road, if the students’ actions were ignored and thus implicitly permitted?
To me the answer is clear. That’s what zero tolerance is about. The only downsides you’ve been able to come up with against the suspensions is the circular argument that they’re not “appropriate or sensible”, which is simply re-stating your own belief without basis, or that they can’t be applied consistently “without denuding schools of students”. But this school, as far as I know, still has students, and so do all other schools that apply zero tolerance to bullying, nor is there any evidence that students are leaving in droves due to anti-bullying policies, or even in the amount of one single student. So the claim that this will happen appears to be unsupported by the facts.
Is Morse v. Frederick at all relevant here? I was never really able to wrap my head around that one, but it seems it was a “school-supervised event,” whereas I don’t see how Facebook is. Unless you constructed some argument around how it’s accessible at school. But I’m not going to be the one to do that.
Hyperbolic much?
Sadly, most of those arguing the opposing view in this thread fail to see how the one leads to the other.
Sincerely,
The Guy Who Never Agrees With Shodan
I haven’t read all the articles - but I would be interested in seeing if there is a difference between
- “Liking” the video is an act of bullying / encourages bullying / is against homosexuality
- “Liking” the video is providing validation / encouragement for an illegal act of vandalism committed on school property.
For me - I have a big problem with schools disciplining students for otherwise legal activities committed outside of school time. I don’t think school has anyplace to regulate or control what I do in my own time.
HOWEVER - in the current case, I don’t have a problem with a school disciplining students that “cheer on / encourage” other students that are deliberately damaging school property.
To me - the nature of the poster that was damaged is a Red Herring - I don’t care if it was an LGBT publicity poster, a Red Necks for Gay Suppression poster, A Young Republicans club poster or whatever - the simple fact of Vandalism of School Property is the “crime” - not the nature of what was defaced.
You ask what the damage of applying “zero tollerance” is. It is a reasonable enough question.
As evidence, you submit the undoubted fact that “zero tollerance” has not, in fact, resulted in a lot of consequences - to your knowledge at least. Let’s accept that as a fact for the sake of argument.
What you fail to see is the reason for this: that actual policing of this policy is, essentially, random and arbitrary. Kids are “liking” hateful messages all over the place, but only very rarely - in fact, singularly - do they get punished for it.
The argument is that if this policy were applied with some consistancy, it would lead to widespread consequences - not to mention consuming huge resources, in monitoring the after-school behaviour of kids online and otherwise.
What, exactly, is accomplished by having a mechanism available whereby a principal may exact significant discipline in such a random and arbitrary manner? Generally speaking, for “disclipline” to be effective, it ought to be resonably consistent and predictable - if Sally skips school, she should get the same punishment as Jimmy if he skips school (depending on whatever mitigating factors). A lkid ought to know that if he does X, then Y punishment will result. Moreover, they ought to know it in advance. Given that we have analyzed the school code upthread and demonstrated that this particular “discipline” was not available, how could a student reasonably know that he’d be suspended for pushing a “like” button?
In every setting, consistency of application is a requirement for basic fairness. The damage of acting in an arbitrary manner is that it will be seen by the students as unfair (and it is), thus undermining the principal’s authority. All for the sake of making a point that has nothing to do with school discipline.
This present action isn’t “discipline” in the sense of correcting in-school behaviour, but essentially a symbolic action, taken to express disapproval for these kids’ moral failings (which failings are admitted). Thinking more on it, it is not, in fact really an example of “zero tolerance”, as there is no evidence that the principal at issue actually did not “tolerate” other students’ internet behaviour of equal obnoxiousness. “Zero tollerance” is more like refusing Sally’s Tylenol because of a “no drugs” policy that admits no exceptions. This is the opposite - making an unaticipated exception for these kids because the principal (justifiably) found their 'tude revolting.
Now, the argument may be raised that the principal cannot know about all the other obnoxious stuff that goes on, or be expected to. That’s exactly the reason why he ought not to concern himself with behaviour that exists outside of the school environment, and does not directly “disrupt” that environment. Which, by an astonishing co-incidence, appears to be the legal test …
Damaging the poster is a clear breach of the Code posted upthread. However, expressing approval of such a breach after the fact is not, as far as I can see, in itself a breach.
The closest I can come to it is “conspiracy”; however, that implies co-operation before the breach was committed. From the Code:
Laughing at an offensive joke could indicate approval of it, just like clicking “'like” on an offensive video could indicate approval of it.
So no, it’s not hyperbolic.
Right. But “consistency of application” is not the same as “consistency of apprehension” or even “likelihood of apprehension”, as you appear to have conceded in your later paragraph. Nor is 100% detection and apprehension a reasonable prerequisite for defining punishable activities. If it were, nobody could ever be charged with speeding if he could show that someone, somewhere, sometime might also have been speeding but didn’t get caught. As a matter of fact we tend to do the opposite – we sometimes assign especially severe penalties to offenses that have a low likelihood of detection, so that the likelihood/severity equation constitutes a meaningful deterrent.
The other aspect of fairness that you simplistically gloss over is that it doesn’t necessary require every specific offense to be spelled out in exacting detail, nor does “fairness” necessarily mean that all offenses at all times be treated exactly the same way. It’s acceptable to have a broad category of offenses and guidelines that are subject to administrative discretion, and it’s acceptable for a punishment to consider the circumstances and the offender’s previous history (for example). Which, by an astonishing coincidence, is exactly how our justice system works.
And the “point” that it’s making is that the school wishes to maintain a physically and emotionally safe environment for its students that is free of bigotry. With any luck, the offenders might grow up with a lessened predisposition to bigotry and less likely to remain punks in their adulthood. It seems like a worthy goal. And I still see no downside.
Laughing at an offensive joke sounds like something that occurs in the privacy of one’s own home, even if you want to stretch that argument to the breaking point by trying to equate it with flagrant hostility, which it is not. But try telling your offensive joke on social media, or on a public television show, and see what happens. Just today I was reading about a football player fined and censured by both his team and the league for tweeting anti-Semitic jokes.
So, yes, the thing you were responding to was ridiculously hyperbolic.
I agree with this assessment of Tinker. The Court agreed that student free speech was not as robust as those of adults and could be curtailed if it interfered with the educational mission of the school.
There can be no rational showing that clicking “like” on a hateful picture interferes with that educational mission. Yes, students will feel offended and perhaps feel “bullied.” But a policy against bullying cannot go so far as to say it “interferes with the educational mission of the school” and prohibit lawful speech.
Such a connection is far too attenuated. What if during an in class debate on same sex marriage a student says “I believe that a homosexual lifestyle is destructive to the family and should not be encouraged”? Does this pass muster? A gay kid hearing this will have that same lack of self-esteem because of the comment, but I cannot imagine that this is not protected speech.
Would “Jews are greedy” or “Black people are inherently violent” be protected in similar circumstances?
So does clicking Like on a Facebook video.
In both cases, one is indicating approval on some level with something others find offensive. In private, and under circumstances not involving the school.
The principal has taken it on himself to censure the private thoughts and activities of his students, using the powers invested in him by the school district. If one accepts that this is legitimate, what objection in principle can you make if this continues to “no laughing at un-approved jokes”?
Regards,
Shodan
I would certainly hope so.
Regards,
Shodan