I should be asleep. Outside I can hear the Castro going off with Halloween revelry. Tomorrow I’ll be on a plane with dotBen, tagging along as he goes to a conference and I take a writing holiday (that’s a vacation, which I have not had one of for three years, but during which I plan to write).
Still, this story can’t sit. Not for me, anyway. Astute and articulate reader M writes the intro better than I can, saying “I hope you don’t check your business email too much over the weekend and get bummed out by this in the middle of it.
We’ve got: punishment for activities unrelated to school/not on school grounds; punishing the girls instead of whoever printed out their pictures and brought them to school; forcing the girls to apologize to their male coaches because… I don’t know – the coaches are somehow in control of the girls expression anywhere and everywhere, sexual or otherwise? – that’s just weird; forcing them to get counseling; the spectre of child-porn conviction to protect them by ruining them…
Gah. It just makes me want to punch ‘Busco in general. Then again, most days I want to punch my entire state in general. Perhaps I will on the way out.”
Churubusco girls sue over discipline
ACLU: Punishment for posting photos on MySpace violated free speech.
Two sophomore girls have sued their school district after they were punished for posting sexually suggestive photos on MySpace during their summer vacation.The American Civil Liberties Union, in a federal lawsuit filed last week on behalf of the girls, argues that Churubusco High School violated the girls’ free-speech rights when it banned them from extracurricular activities for a joke that didn’t involve the school. They say the district humiliated the girls by requiring them to apologize to an all-male coaches board and undergo counseling.
(…) The girls, identified only by their initials in the suit, took the photos during a sleepover with friends before school started this summer and posted them on their MySpace pages, setting the privacy controls so only those designated as friends could view them. In the photos, the girls wore lingerie and pretended to lick a penis-shaped lollipop. None of the photos made any reference to the school.
Weber declined to say how the photos reached Couch, but the suit contends that someone copied the pictures and shared them with school officials, and they eventually were given to the principal.
Couch initially suspended both girls from all extracurricular activities for the year, but reduced the penalty to 25 percent of fall semester activities after the girls completed three counseling sessions and apologized to the coaches board.
Palfrey, the Harvard professor, said privacy on social-networking sites is an illusion, even if strict privacy controls are set.
Teens who have done similar things in some states have faced prosecution, said Beverly Johnson, an Irvine, Calif., attorney who serves on the board of Web Wise Kids, a nonprofit, online safety group. A 14-year-old New Jersey girl was arrested on child pornography charges in March for posting nude pictures of herself on My Space. The charges were later dropped after she agreed to counseling.
Other students have been expelled from school or lost scholarships, Johnson said. (…read more, news-sentinel.com)
See also, my articles in the SF Chronicle:
* Kids Charged for Child Porn – Violet Blue: When Teens Make Their Own Porn, Who’s Being Exploited? (sfgate.com)
* Teens Love Sex – Violet Blue: The UK can deal with it, why can’t we? (sfgate.com)
Never fails. If it has to do with sex, someone’s going to get involved that has no business doing so. Someone has to impose their morals on someone they think is wrong. I don’t think that’ll change.
kudos to the girls for not just meekly being told how they can express themselves. are the printing-out-and-bringing to school kids going to get punished? as a parent of a teenager i’m constantly terrified, but you basically can only guide, advise, and love your kids, you can’t control them.
Good grief. What a pack of sexist idiots.
Hey, what’s going on with the blog design?
i completly agree with R. And not only that, what is councilling supposed to do towards helping them? repressed sexuality at their age will only lead to more problems later on.
Harrie
Great they didn’t just lay down and take it – so to speak.
Well… at least they’re fighting back. Good for them.
Aside from everything else that’s wrong with this, is the fact that it’s none of the school’s fucking business. The girls did not post the pictures using school computers, the pictures were not taken on school grounds, the pictures did not involve the school in any way… so why does the school feel it’s entitled to “discipline” them?
I agree with Daniel. This had nothing to do with the school; school wasn’t even in session. The first amendment reads “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
I don’t see anything that states schools have the right to censor what students do, on their own time, in their own home, not even in the school year.
Making the young women apologize to MALE COACHES because they were licking a “penis-shaped” sucker. Excuse me — I don’t want to get graphic here, however, I can’t help but wonder how many of those men have had the same sort of activity performed on them?
It had nothing to do with them. It is my humble opinion that the principal and the coaches should apologize in public, not only to the young women, also to every woman in the United States. The school system needs to keep their nose out of the young women’s business outside of the school year and school. GO GET THEM ACLU!!!
Inquiries and questions can be directed here: couch.austin@sgcs.k12.in.us
If someone’s not able to handle with teen sexuality and doesn’t know how to guide them, he just tries to repress it.
What really shocks me is the humilation these teens have to endure. This may affect their sexualtiy in a negative way for the rest of their lives.
What also makes me angry in this context, is that there’s always someone who violates the privacy of other by publishing the pictures but doesn’t get any punishment for it.