Should school punish for Facebook squabbles?

[TheLQ offline]

Yes, today it happened: A teacher of mine threatened to tell the school system about the constant bashing going on between 4 friends on MY Facebook wall.

Here's some background: In my computer class there are 4 people that I want to talk about: Nick, Ryan, Phillip, and Michael. The victim of all of this is Michael. The other three keep bashing him and bashing him on many different things (this all happened on my wall ). I wouldn't call it bullying because Michael kept saying completely wrong things, them 3 corrected him, and Michael got all defensive. It slowly degrades from here. This entire cycle has happened multiple times, with I think this one being the 7th.

I've added my teacher Fischer as a friend because he allowed it and at the time I thought he was alright. Apparently he has been sitting back watching this happen and somehow slowly getting mad. Once before he has brought up in class a very large fight that happened on FB between those 4 that lasted about 60 comments. Pretty big. He brought that up in class sorta masked as inter-communication issues that we "needed to work on because we can't communicate worth crap". Us though that participated/watched knew the real reason for the sudden realization that Fischer had.

However today it was worse. Over the weekend another big fight happened that I estimate at 40 comments (they deleted all of them) and it somehow pissed of Fischer. So he brought it up in class today calling us all pussies (strike one), we didn't have any balls to do this in RL (strike two), and that this is bullying (strike three). When challenged on the last part he got pissed and said that if I had a problem with it I was welcome to leave and drop this course. He taunted us with what he calls the soap box; literally a box of soap with wood inside of it that we would stand on and get 30 seconds to say whatever we want and have it stay there. I got up and said that my wall is not a battle ground and school shouldn't interfere with FB, Phillip got up and said not to tell somebody to do something while insulting them (no idea where that fits in...), this other kid randomly got up and asked if we could all just get along, and Ryan said that this was getting out of hand.
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The part that I'm hung up on is the threat of bulling complaints. To me this just seems like bullsh*t to report what happens on Facebook to school. I live by a firm principle that a teachers rules and control ends at their doorway. The school's collective rules and control end at the front door. Everyone has boundaries. This on the other hand seems to be crossing it. Fischer justifies his actions (sorta) by saying that Facebook is public, and therefor he is perfectly fine to do it. I say no, that it has limited access. Labeling everything on the internet as public is wrong, because email happens over the internet but its considered wrong to read it unauthorized. BKO is considered private. Facebook (unless your an idiot and set all of your settings to everyone) is private. Only a few people can access it.

But its not just that people can't get to it, I can pull out many examples of the school passing on info to other people because its out of their control. There is Social Services, counseling, behavioral treatment, etc. Thease are all external people that come in to handle situations. The school has no right. So why is this person doing the opposite of everyone else?

But I am curious what you all have to say: Should FB be dragged into school? Is it right for a teacher to get you in trouble for something you said on YOUR wall?

And btw, to remedy the situation I added him to my block list. I'm awaiting the response from the support team, but it should prevent him from seeing anything I do. I wouldn't exist to him. Lets hope it works. I've threatened to send a stalking complaint to the county superintendant and an email to Facebook's abuse group if he brings up what happens on my wall even after I've blocked him. 2 of my friends from a game I play (middle aged adults that I think are conservatives) already agree with what I've done.

PS: Please, keep track of the topic and lets not let this degrade into personal attacks.

[matsumo itsu offline]

Well thing is, if you are on facebook at school then that's kinda your own bad, and it is a form of bullying, cyber bullying, which does create a lot of problems believe it or not, the SVU episode involving it portrayed it, though a little drastically/dramatically, rather nice. So it is a form of bullying and if someone was picking on you in real life outside school and you got bruises(relates to emotional bruises online) wouldn't you want a teacher stand up for you if you couldn't yourself?

[TheLQ offline]

None of these posts happened while at school. All comments where completely independent of school's control.

And no, I would NOT want a teacher medling in affairs that happened outside of school. There is the police for that. Getting bullied? First ignore them with whatever program your using and then only if it gets worse do you call the police or some other person. Hell, if its bad enough you can call their ISP and get their internet connection revoked if you provide enough information.

There needs to be a big bold line between school and the rest of the world.

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On another note I'm wondering if he will find this topic... He does know my alias and I think knows that I go to this forum. If I get confronted with it I can't say that he bypassed access but I can use it as another reason for him stalking me. There's no legitimate reason to be monitoring your students activity on a forum that is not accessed at school...

[Overcaffeinated Sloth offline]

Ouch, this gets into tricky territory.

To start with, the teacher shouldn't be adding students as friends on social networking sites, it goes against most ethics codes. The reason is because of this... while teachers may feel obligated to report such acts, the fact is teachers have no jurisdiction calling out things like that.

The best thing in the situation... would have been to report the comments. All of them. Many sites, (facebook, Myspace, youtube, and even LF) have a Terms of Service, which state rules on harassment, including additional ones for each site. Legal and binding contracts. All of those things go against the TOS... you can boot either of those. Simply put, what happens on facebook stays in facebook, banned by facebook.



(I can relate a bit to the story, though. I have a false name on my FB, just to avoid such occurrences.)

[Rho offline]

No.

What's off school grounds stays out of school business.

My middle school principal would apparently search for the profiles of each of the students on MySpace and try to add them.


If it gets to something happening at school, like a fight, then that is when it should happen. In the meantime, it is not the business of any teachers or staff.

[TheLQ offline]

To start with, the teacher shouldn't be adding students as friends on social networking sites, it goes against most ethics codes. The reason is because of this... while teachers may feel obligated to report such acts, the fact is teachers have no jurisdiction calling out things like that.

I'm currently asking the superintendant if this is even allowed for teachers. I think its not considering that lots of teachers refuse to add students, but it might just be an unwritten rule, not an actual decree.

The best thing in the situation... would have been to report the comments. All of them. Many sites, (facebook, Myspace, youtube, and even LF) have a Terms of Service, which state rules on harassment, including additional ones for each site. Legal and binding contracts. All of those things go against the TOS... you can boot either of those. Simply put, what happens on facebook stays in facebook, banned by facebook.

The thing is though is that comments are actually not too far out of hand. Its just little fights sprinkled with cuss words and bad grammer for anger and speed. The worst that its gotten is that Phil essentially said that he was better than Michael and referenced to Michael not having a girlfiriend. But thats not against the TOS in my knowledge, thats just being a douchbag.

[Overcaffeinated Sloth offline]

Hmm... In that case, it might've been misunderstood by the teacher.

And it's not always an expressed decree... it's an ethics thing. It's like... should students go out for dinner with their teachers? Should they meet up outside of school? Should teachers go to bars, in case they're seen by students? When a student is out of school, that's usually fine, since there is no longer an affiliation for the student.

(I rather hate how schools are run like businesses...)

But... if your teacher is using that kind of language in class, over something that seems to be so minor... it really undermines the classroom and the teacher's effectiveness... it';s a rather troubling situation.

[JesusFreak offline]

If it was on your wall, why didn't you delete it? :|

[Taelia offline]

Wow. I wouldn't want any of that to happen to me. I have a Facebook myself.

[Rail Runner offline]

As far as I am concerned, what happens out of school should remain so. Our instructors *tech school* have Facebooks, and hell, we clown each other on Facebook, but then again, we are all adults, and can do so with complete understanding that we are just playing around. If the teacher is bringing personal things into the classroom, then yeah, I see a problem there. Unless the fight happened in his classroom, then I dont think he should be concerned with it.

[green offline]

I'm currently asking the superintendant if this is even allowed for teachers. I think its not considering that lots of teachers refuse to add students, but it might just be an unwritten rule, not an actual decree.

I'm fairly certain that somewhere it says that this is explicitly against the rules because of all those cases of teachers and students having affairs or something along those lines.

While personally I don't think having a teacher added on your facebook was a good move to begin with, I agree that their jurisdiction stops at the door and they have no right to be looking through your personal things, even if they're posted on the internet. Some school system ended up having a case taken to the federal level because of certain software in school-issued laptops that could remotely activate the webcam. They said it was just in case the computer was stolen, but apparently they were spying on the kid's activities with this while they were at home and caught someone eating a box of candy, then had him called in to the counselors office the next day to talk about his drug problem. Who knows what else they could have caught on someone else's laptop.

Granted that's a rather extreme case, but there's a reason school officials are supposed to stay out of student's personal lives. I'm well aware that most of these people do have our well being at heart with things like this, but there's a fine line between a necessary intervention and invasion of privacy. Your facebook thing in particular doesn't sound that bad, but that teacher should have left it alone unless it came into his classroom, and even then, left the facebook comments out of it despite the fact he knew. He shouldn't have been there to begin with.

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[Mewberries151]

This may not be a plausible solution in the meantime, since I understand these are your friends but...I would ask them if they could <i>not</i> pick fights on your wall. Tell them to do it on their own wall or in the various private methods FB offers. Letting them continue to argue/bully/etc, on your wall will ultimately just get you in trouble along with them even if you're not directly involved. And as friends, they should be able to understand your wish for them to not do that, and take their bickering elsewhere.