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A federal judge has ruled against a high school student who was barred from running for re-election as class secretary after she called school officials “douchebags” on her blog. The ruling highlights the unsettled nature of First Amendment law as it applies to high school students’ off-campus speech, as well as the limited protections courts have granted to student government.
The court had previously found that participation in student government “is a privilege,” and that students do not have a constitutional right to run for student government office “while engaging in uncivil and offensive communications regarding school administrators.” It found that the school had punished Doninger for “vulgar language,” not for criticizing school officials’ actions, and that they were within their rights to do so.
In its latest ruling, the same court found that although an appeals court had cast their previous argument into question, the administrators were protected from legal action. The underlying question at issue in this case is whether a student has “a right not to be prohibited from participating in a voluntary, extracurricular activity because of off campus speech” that the student has reason to expect will become known on campus, the court said, and that question is unresolved.
In 1979, an appeals court ruled in strong language that students generally cannot be punished for off-campus speech. The Doninger court, however, argued that…
“we are not living in the same world that existed in 1979. The students in Thomas were writing articles for an obscene publication on a typewriter and handing out copies after school. Today, students are connected to each other through e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, social networking sites, and text messages. An e-mail can be sent to dozens or hundreds of other students by hitting ‘send.’ … Off-campus speech can become on-campus speech with the click of a mouse.”
As we noted yesterday, the CUPE membership has rejected York University’s contract offer, and York has announced that they will not be returning to the bargaining table.
This morning comes word that Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty is sending his top labor mediator to Toronto to “bang some heads” and find an agreement.
McGuinty is reportedly opposed to bringing forward back-to-work legislation in the Ontario legislature, fearing that CUPE would challenge any such law in court, further extending the strike.
2:36 pm Update: Today’s Excalibur article has material from York president Mamdouh Shoukri’s press conference last night that I haven’t seen elsewhere. They quote him as saying that the university’s rejected offer will be “the basis for any future settlement, and that York “will not resume bargaining until we see a significant move” from CUPE. He also said that the university “have not asked for government intervention, nor has it been offered.”
4:34 pm Update: Click here for some background on the strike.
Earlier this fall, Tennessee State University became the first public university to block students’ access to the gossip website Juicy Campus.
Now comes word that Juicy Campus has reached out to the Tennessee chapter of the ACLU for assistance in bringing a lawsuit against TSU. The headline of this article notwithstanding, it does not appear that JC has yet filed suit. But we’re following this story, and we’ll pass on more news as we get it.
In other Juicy Campus news, the student government of Western Illinois University has passed a resolution calling on WIU’s administration to enact its own JC ban, with student government president Robert Dulski organizing for statewide action at a meeting of Illinois state student governments in February.
Meanwhile, in Ohio, Miami University’s panhellenic organization asked the state attorney general to take action against JC, while the Miami student newspaper editorialized against such a move.
Take a look at College Freedom, a blog from John K. Wilson, the author of Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and its Enemies and The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education.
The Recording Industry Association of America has announced that it is abandoning its legal strategy of bringing large-scale lawsuits against students and others who download music from the internet.
The RIAA has been bringing such suits for more than five years, often targeting students who used college networks for file-sharing. According to one expert quoted in the Chronicle article, such suits sometimes forced students to drop out of college.
Steven L. Worona, the director of policy and networking programs at the education-policy group Educause, said the move demonstrated that the RIAA understands that “their sue-the-customer, scorched-earth business model has not worked.”
studentactivism.net 
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