It's a blog, relax

    In Burlington, Connecticut, a teen was told she was not allowed to participate on her student government council because of a blog she had written about the school. The girl allegedly used vulgarity while explaining that a school event, called “Jamfest”had been canceled.

    The student, Avery Doninger, was her class secretary and when she went up for re-election, her school officials refused to let her. The teen took it to a federal court where the judge sided with the school. The judge said that the student could be punished because what she wrote in the blog addressed the school and was probably read by fellow students.

    Her lawyer then argued that what teens write on their blogs should not be punishable by a school because it is an off-campus activity.

    Now, after reading that the student had used “lewd and vulgar” things on her blog and was actually punished for it, you would expect some personal attacks, maybe a few “F”-bombs and possibly a nicely Photoshopped picture or two, right?

    Actually, the vulgarity that she was punished for was referring to an administrator as “pissed off” and a brief comment announcing, “Jamfest is canceled due to douche bags in central office.”  

    While maybe it isn’t in the good taste, is it really worth banning a student who had been loyal to her school’s SGA from continuing her service? Obviously she could have said it differently, but I don’t think that the language used is worth that type of punishment.

    It is a blog, and there needs to be a clear distinction between where schools can govern and where they cannot.  What a student writes in a blog cannot be monitored if it is written on someone’s personal time outside of school. The student’s punishment would be more rational if there was a little more than a few sentences about an issue like the one addressed.

    The bottom line is that schools cannot censor what is done during a student’s free time away from school.