Like, Totally Bogus
By Mitch Berg
I’m all for privacy – as in, “more than you”, whomever you are (and that means you too, Chuck Samuelson). As someone whose free speech Hillary Clinton has in her cross-hairs, I’m obviously a First-Amendment advocate (and the rest of the Bill of Rights as well). And I’m a pretty forthright critic of the public school system.
But I still would like to see these kids tossed out on their ears
Thirteen Eden Prairie High students who were pictured drinking online face penalties. Some students are planning a walkout after first period this morning, and they’re promoting the protest where the controversy began: on Facebook.com.
The walkout – as opposed to a job strike – has always struck me as the most gutless and snotty form of protest, in general. I don’t know who’s teaching these kids about rhetoric, civil disobedience and protest, but if it’s a teacher, the district should get its money back.
January 10th, 2008 at 10:39 am
I am torn on this issue. Yes, the kids were morons for posting possibly (key word) incriminating pictures on Facebook. But, unless we want to ascribe super-legal powers to the school system, I would think there needs to be stricter standards than completely discretionary “if it looks like it is, then it is”. For instance, the one quote about Danny O’Leary from yesterday’s article: “He said he will point out that two of the photos were taken two years ago, before he joined the lacrosse team and signed a pledge not to drink.” I would be right in the administration’s faces asking them how DARE they apply their policy retroactively to before he even signed it? There is NO WAY that would hold up in a court of law. And yes, while it would have been illegal for Mr O’Leary to have been drinking 2 years ago, that violation is not in the jurisdiction of the school district to pursue.
Also from yesterday’s article: Natalie Friedman, a senior who is not part of any sports programs, said she was called in by her dean and scolded about Facebook photos of her behind a bar at a friend’s house with drinks visible. She declined to say whether she was drinking, saying that no one can prove there was alcohol in the beverages.
If the school district wants to push it, then they better be able to prove beyond a doubt that there was illegal consumption occurring, not just the appearance of it. Not to mention, those kids who had pictures of family gatherings. So a kid is not supposed to attend a wedding reception or have pictures taken there because there were champagne toasts occurring? The idiocy of not considering the unintended consequences of policies like this is beyond astounding.
To me, this whole incident is as high up the retarded-zero-tolerance scale as was the case of the high school senior a few years ago who, even though she was going into the National Guard after graduation, was not allowed to have a PICTURE of her posing next to a cannon in the yearbook because of anti-weapon zero tolerance policies.
http://www.ZeroIntelligence.net will never run out of material with the way things are now
January 10th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Lesson from my high school days…..if there is booze at the event, leave right away. “I wasn’t drinking” doesn’t fly. Kind of like open container in a car….”gee officer, I wasn’t drinking out of this beer, it’s just sitting here in my cup holder”.
January 10th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Lesson from my high school days….don’t get photographed doing anything you shouldn’t be doing. And this was looooong before the internet.
January 10th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
I’m with Bill C. on this one. The lesson for my kids is that if they’re called into a school administrator’s office, they’re to say, “I need to speak to my attorney, and my father, and I do not consent to any search.”
I’m not condoning bad behavior; I just have little faith in a school administration* and some of the tin-pot dictators who work for them to know what it is and isn’t when they think they see it, and zero trust in their common sense as to how to handle it.
(Reminds me of an entry from my No Good Deed Goes Unpunished file, and yes, I’m talking about you, Dan Grout. Pick on a grownup, next time — preferably one who’s got you on camera.)
_____________
* I can think of two school administrators I have great faith in. I trust some people, not institutions.
January 10th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
If the students can’t be punished for boozing it up, they should be punished for being idiots…
“Look at me, I’m 15 years old and drinking. Now, take my picture with that digital camera. It’s not like anyone will ever see these shots.”
January 10th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Joel and BillC:
I agree. And if you recall from my account of my own little run-in with deeply-stupid school bureaucracy, I agree with Joel; treat every “school” disciplinary action as a “real” criminal investigation and defense (only in a tinhorn dictatorship, rather than the US).
I fully support free expression. My only real beef with this story is the walk-out.
January 10th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
It’s not just the walkout. I posted on this too, and my point was at least three college kids have died from alcohol poisoning this school year. There’s a reason we don’t let them drink, and judgment is at it’s core.
These morons are protesting people who are trying to keep them alive.
January 10th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Kermit — I don’t doubt (some of) the motivations of (some) school administrators; as I’ve said to her face, behind her back, and in little black letters, Aura Wharton-Beck, now principal at Jenny Lind is, quite simply, one of the smartest, toughest, and kindest people I’ve ever known.
But I do doubt the judgment of all school administrators by default, as there’s far too many blank files, tinpot dictators, and idiots who think that their need to control others constitutes “help.”
January 10th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
“I need to speak to my attorney, and my father, and I do not consent to any search.”
Joel, I’ve been told by more than one lawyer that that’s pretty much the way you deal with any law officer if you’re at all uncomfortable with the situation. They’ve also been pretty universal in the refusal of searches, too, in ANY situation since it’s not unknown for evidence to magically appear during one of those.
The kids in the article were dumb. That their parents are actually willing to allow them to call for a “walkout” rather than removing any chance for similarly stupid behaviour says more about the parents of such idiots than anything else. I doubt this is the dumbest thing those kids will do given their parents.
If that’d been me in the article there would never been an issue. Anything the school could have done would have been nothing compared to what my dad would have done.
January 10th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Lamest protest I ever heard about was a hunger strike that lasted until lunchtime.
January 10th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Joel,
It’s not simply the schools. We have these laws because kids generally lack good judgment. The very fact that pictures wound up on Facebook is evidence of this.
January 10th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
nerdbert — yup. The Vice Principal at my daughter’s now former school called me up to report that she’d lawyered up. (She and her friends had done a good deed, as it turns out, but it had embarrassed the school’s hall monitor.) He seemed to expect me to be angry with her for that.
“Well,” I said, after he filled me in on the particular idiocy that the school’s hall monitor and MPD “liaison” officer had engaged in, “so that’s why you’re calling me, I take it. Where is she?”
“Well . . . ”
“Well?”
“Well, after they finished the conversation we sent her back to cla — ”
“You’re not telling me that after a US citizen — a minor — asked for her legal guardian and her attorney your hall monitor — ”
“Director of Security.”
” — hall monitor with delusions of cophood and this cop with the name like the dirty stuff between tile — Grout, right? — continued the interrogation?”
“I don’t know that it was an interrogation. ”
“Your ignorance isn’t of terribly great interest to me. You are telling me, I take it, that your minions attempted to continue the interrogation, and that you think that if you call it something else that matters even a little.”
“Hey, we’re all on the same side.”
What’s an eight-letter word for “bullshit”? I thought. Oh, right. Bullshit.“Tell me, Mr. Alexander, do you own your own home?”
January 10th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Has anyone here read the Strib article and accompanying photos of the “walkout” and the link you can follow to read comments? All very interesting. My take is that it involves rules broken according the MSHL (or whatever-not sure of all the letters!). Period. You break those rules, you’re out of the game. It’s really quite simple.
I was a bad teen (drinking, staying out late) and had the attitude lots of these kids have: Who are you to tell me anything?! They think they have some sort of “free speech” rights! What? One or two commenters think they should be judged under “innocent until proven guilty”! It’s not court-it’s a privilege to play high school sports-you don’t follow the rules-you don’t play. Pretty simple. Also, school is not a democracy where you get to vote for the rules you want and the majority rules. This is all asinine and the parents sticking up for these brats are wrinkled brats. Think of the trouble any of you raised before the last 15 years would have been in at home-welp, not anymore. The little darlings can’t lose a minute of whatever it is they want to do.
Some people do abuse their power in schools, but I found if you keep a low profile you WILL NOT get in trouble. WILL NOT. I didn’t always do that and got in trouble a couple times (suspension for smoking, suspension for skipping). Was that someone else’s fault? My son was a liason officer in the school here at the start of his career (he is now a Detective). He was just barely out of school himself and was shocked at how disrespectful and profane the current crop of brats are. And what would happen when parents were notified of any wrongdoings (which took a lot to get in trouble by the way)? Well of course the old “Not my kid” routine. Just like these kids at Eden Prairie-they weren’t drinking -somebody else was and they were just there or holding the glass or…blah blah blah. I pulled that lying crap too. Any parent who believes it is a fool.
January 11th, 2008 at 8:21 am
I’m all for privacy “as in more than you” – phumper phumper whumper do, I see BS from you, and you and YOU. Mitch, just like your position on woman’s right’s, you’re all talk, no action. You stand idley by while NSA wiretapping goes on, while people are put into Guantanamo without anything other than the word of some Afghani warlord (who got paid $500 per head) puts people away for “a long time” without trial, without counsel, without hope (for those of you following along at home – those people who are committed to Gitmo are sent there often based on privately held resentment of those same warlords or unfriendly religious beliefs TO those warlords). You’re so decidecly NOT as ‘for privacy’ as the average person you could easily be described as a security paranoid extremist who long ago abandoned any semblence of concern about restraining government, and anyone doing so would be exactly right.
That said, a walk-out, over Facebook??! My reaction to that is, these kids (and their parents) are just a bit too full of themselves. Count them absent, tardy, truant, and rack up the unexcused absentee points toward failing the grade. That will probably turn this tempest in a teapot, back into a teapot’s tempest – which is all that it is, and more than it deserves.
January 11th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Hmmm NSA wiretapping , as in the NSA listening to calls from folks with known terrorist connections who are outside the US to their contacts inside the US right?
I always get a chuckle out of the dexterspheres collective fear that Big Father is listening to each and every call and soon enough the re-education camps in the Dakotas will soon be opened , where they will be force fed a diet of John Wayne films and Lawrence Welk Music
Oh the horror!
January 11th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
For instance, the one quote about Danny O’Leary from yesterday’s article: “He said he will point out that two of the photos were taken two years ago, before he joined the lacrosse team and signed a pledge not to drink.” I would be right in the administration’s faces asking them how DARE they apply their policy retroactively to before he even signed it? There is NO WAY that would hold up in a court of law.
You may want to go back and reread the language of the MSHL 2007-2008 Athletic Eligibility Brochure which is found on the same page as the article that you linked to. Item #9 of the Checklist for Student Eligibility at the top of the first page says “Have not and will not use or possess tobacco or alcoholic beverages, use, consume, have in possession, buy, sell or give away any other controlled substance, including steroids.” The words “have not” indicates that in order to be eligible to participate in high school athletics, you are not only saying that you won’t commit the prohibited act in the future (through your high school career) but that you haven’t done it in the past.
If the school district wants to push it, then they better be able to prove beyond a doubt that there was illegal consumption occurring, not just the appearance of it.
Hate to break the news to you but school administrative punishment (while you may be entitled to notice and an opportunity to be heard) doesn’t require a criminal law standard of proof. Without the severity of a criminal sanction (i.e. imprisonment or a fine), there’s no requirement that they have to “prove beyond a reasonable doubt” in order to suspend a student from an athletic event.