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Comment by enzanki_ars | Hacker News Reader

The worst part too is the fact that the students posting those photos have been suspended with potential for expulsion.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/laurenstrapagiel/north-...

The principal doubled down and said any student found criticizing the school on social media could face disciplinary consequences.

WTAF? So, now students can't criticize the schools!?

So much for free speech and personal choices!

In the US, we're taught that as students we do not have any rights while at school.

So they grow up to be good compliant citizens who never assert those pesky rights.

That's not quite right, though:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=152357971394931...

Sure, but I heard the words "you do not have rights" from just about every administrator and authority figure in the school system while I was growing up. This was Nashville 2002-2010.

edit: Just wanna say that the information in your link is valuable, and students should absolutely know about it. In my experience, there's just wide discrepancy between the way the world works and the way authority figures present it to children who don't know any better.

This isn't limited to just school personnel. Cops aren't too fond of people knowing their rights either.

There's been litigation about this kind of issue all over the country for years (disciplinary action by public schools against students for their off-campus speech about the schools) and the students commonly win, although the legal rules can be complicated in comparison to rules about adults' speech.

There's also a common pattern where school administrations don't seem to know much about earlier court decisions about students' rights. The Supreme Court said back in 1943 that public school students couldn't be forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_State_Board_of_E...

but I remember in 1997 meeting a girl who had been disciplined for not saying it at her public school, and hers was far from the last case.

These students could probably get pro bono legal representation and send a demand letter to the principal over this. [Edit: because of the social media aspect, the students could contact the intake coordinator at EFF, where I used to work, and they could likely get a helpful legal referral.]

Although I hope the students' speech rights will be fully vindicated, I notice that I also have more empathy for school administrations than I used to. Public school administrators have a ton of responsibility, many angry constituents with opposing views, few resources, and lots of complicated legal constraints, and are not necessarily experts on all the issues that will come up unexpectedly.

> Although I hope the students' speech rights will be fully vindicated, I notice that I also have more empathy for school administrations than I used to. Public school administrators have a ton of responsibility, many angry constituents with opposing views, few resources, and lots of complicated legal constraints, and are not necessarily experts on all the issues that will come up unexpectedly.

I have sympathy for the spot the school administrators are in. Many of their students' families depend on having both parents working in order to survive. Those parents need the kids to be in school. But if they reopen, the schools are almost certainly going to spread an infection that kills people. The administrators have no good options, merely a choice between different kinds of bad.

Suspending the kids who posted the video? No sympathy. That's a total jerk move.

Sounds like a good way to stay home and avoid the virus.

It does seem sensible that sharing photos publicly could be banned for privacy of other students reasons. But criticising the school should absolutely be allowed.

> On Wednesday, the school addressed the controversy that had swirled around the viral photograph via an intercom announcement from North Paulding High School principal Gabe Carmona. In it, according to two people familiar with the situation, he stated that any student found criticizing the school on social media could face disciplinary consequences.

They can't suspend everyone, I really hope this results in every student posting images.

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