School expels student for swearing on Twitter during non-school hours

[Duelist925]

I think everyone can agree that expulsion is excessive but what about just punishing him in general? Didn't happen at school but it did happen on school equipment.

It didn't happen on school equipment--it happened outside of school, on a home comp, at 2:30 am, so not during school hours. The school evidently monitors its students social media profiles.

[Greenday]

Supposedly, the story goes that the equipment used by the kid was the property of the school, but the account was his personal Twitter account.

It didn't happen on school equipment--it happened outside of school, on a home comp, at 2:30 am, so not during school hours. The school evidently monitors its students social media profiles.

That's not what I heard.

[fireheart17]

That's not what I heard.

If this is the link you're thinking of, I can see the confusion

http://news.priyo.com/gadgets/2012/0...ing-48913.html

It says that he made the offending statement at 2:30am...but also says that he logged on during school hours? Am I missing something?

[Andara Bledin]

Blog article at Technolog that confirms that the tweet was made from the laptop provided to the teen by the school.

An article at Forbes looking at the issue of privacy and responsibility in the Internet age.

It says that he made the offending statement at 2:30am...but also says that he logged on during school hours? Am I missing something?

It's saying that if you log in during school hours, then your account gets added to the list that the school system monitors. The tweet was made in the wee hours, but since he'd logged in while at school at some point, it was already in the system for monitoring.

One of the articles mentions the waste of resources that has to be going on in order to monitor all of that, plus the potential for liability should they miss something important despite their monitoring system.

^-.-^

[Greenday]

Exactly how much resources are they wasting? I wasn't aware that it took tons of time and effort to do something so simple as let a program run itself.

[DrFaroohk]

Exactly how much resources are they wasting? I wasn't aware that it took tons of time and effort to do something so simple as let a program run itself.

I doubt any program "runs itself". Someone had to buy the program, someone has to maintain it, someone has to take the time to look at the things it monitors. Then they have to go tell someone else, and they have to have a big committee meeting to deal with it.

So where did he break the computer? All I'm see is the kid mouthing off on Twitter. I don't see how that can cause a computer to be refurbished, reformatted, or whatever.

Exactly my point.

[bex1218]

In school suspension would be a perfect punishment, if this kid did no wrong throughout his high school career. And no access to a school computer unless at school. Expelling is extreme.

I'm glad someone else found a site that showed he used school equipment. If its true of course. I hate not knowing all the facts.

[ngc_7331]

Here's something interesting from the article.

"She said she was told that if Carroll had his school laptop running, it would appear the tweet came from the school computer."

So if I'm reading that right, even if he was on his home computer, if he had the school computer on the system would say he was on the home computer? If that's the case, there's no way of telling which computer the tweet came from.

[telecom_goddess]

This is just ridiculous...school computer, home computer, who cares. They do not need to be monitoring anyone's Twitter status. If the kid swears on there who gives a shit? it doesn't hurt anyone. It has no effect on the world.

Between schools doing this shit and employers wanting passwords to fb and crap it's getting to be one giant invasion of privacy.

Surely they have better things to do at this school than worry about someone's twitter account.