So, I’m not an employer. But if I were, and if I came across a website where someone (let me choose my words carefully) had spent four years harassing a child over where he’d gone to school, and I were considering this kid, now grown, as an employee, I can’t imagine it’d make me unfavorably disposed toward the kid.
If I were considering any social interaction with the website designer, well, that’s a different story entirely.
The Straight Dope: Ruining Peoples Lives Since Some Kid Was In High School.
Are the 99’ers going senile or something?
Time to retire from the internet guys.
I’m positive the site exists as I was able to track it down. I won’t link to it because I don’t want to increase its ranking in Google at all. Also, doing so wouldn’t just be increasing the potential harm to the student mentioned in the OP: the site details multiple students believed to be “illegally” attending the school district.
So the OP is on a mission, huh?
So, just mangle the link and include it here as text.
Back in 2012, bizerta posted about this, indicating that he had been on the case for 18 months at that point. While I can see that the school district would have an issue with providing services to out-of-district residents, I think maybe you’re taking this a bit far. It sounds like you’ve raised the issue to the relevant authorities. Maybe you should move on to other issues at this point.
Would you consider negotiating an alternative arrangement, such as her agreeing to not put up a “bizerta is a dick” web site?
Give a man a hint? I can’t seem to find it.
Of course that doesn’t make it not blackmail. If it was that easy, blackmailers would have an absurdly easy loophole (JimBob: I won’t tell anybody about your intimate encounter with a goat if you give BillyRay $10k; BillyRay: I won’t tell anybody about your squirrel porn collection if you give JimBob $10k).
I think it also gets one too close to personally identifying the OP. I now regret even bringing it up for that reason.
The word you’re missing from the quoted law is “threatens”, as in “…threatens to accuse…”. The OP is not threatening anything, the “offense” is already posted. I agree with Gary T’s assessment.
Hey! You take that back or I’ll…um…wait, what was the question?
Maybe not quite legally blackmail but by now something of a dick move, and I’m not sure if OP would maybe be incurring in “false assumption of public authority” or something of the sort by taking it upon themselves to make a collection demand on behalf of the school district. No need to remove the shaming site if it’s factual, but if the district settled informally, then what’s it to anyone else?
Why won’t those poor people just let their kids have a shitty education!
OP, this kid would probably not even be going to college if it weren’t for your school district. The benefit to our society as a whole to have this person graduate college and enter the workforce is worth way more than a few tens of thousands of dollars you think they owe your town.
On the case for 18 months and considering protesting at graduation. :rolleyes: OP never made it back to that thread so I wouldn’t hold my breath for any sort of further participation in this one, either.
You’re asking the wrong question here. The question you should be asking is, “Why is my fixation on pursuing this issue so much more important than not potentially ruining this kid’s life, who was presumably innocent of the actions taken by his parents?”
You are quite the crusader, making the world better for everyone. Or at least for the “I got mine” crowd. I don’t think you could be prosecuted for blackmail, but if you are, think of it as an act of civil disobedience. Like Rosa Parks, you should be willing to face arrest in your fight against the tyranny of the middle class.
Are you a school employee whose job it is to ferret this sort of thing out, or just someone who hates “other people” coming into his neighborhood? I can’t imagine why anyone would even care so long after the fact. I’m feeling very thankful for our area’s Open Enrollment Act.
If not blackmail, I would think it could still count as harassment, or possibly stalking.
I understand that people find what the OP is doing unacceptable, but if we allowed anyone to go to whatever schools they wanted, we’d have a free rider problem since there isn’t enough money to give everyone a first class education. Though their motives are understandable, the parents who are doing this are committing theft, and their actions are not justifiable.
By the way, I found the site too. I’m confident that anyone reasonable skilled could do so as well, if they want. Its not very interesting.