Warren Watson
First Thoughts
Oct. 15, 2007

Examining free speech online

Just how free are students to express themselves when they’re online and not physically in a school building?

This has become an ongoing debate nationwide as the First Amendment battleground moves into cyberspace.

A skirmish has just played itself out at West Lafayette High School here in Indiana.

The Student Press Law Center (SPLC), an organization that monitors free-expression activities of the nation’s high school and college students, reported that sophomore Caitlyn Casseday and other students received in-school suspensions after criticizing an administrator on Facebook, a social-networking site.

According to the report, Casseday called  an administrator an “ass” on a Facebook page formed to support another student who was disciplined after a fight in a computer lab.

Although the student said she has no plans to take legal action, the incident calls into greater profile the dilemma created by online speech.  Just how far should the school be able to go in prohibiting free speech?  In West Lafayette, according to the Student Press Law Center, the school district is mulling a new policy that would restrict online speech.

Many legal experts consider such policies as overreaching on the part of schools, particularly if the speech takes place off campus and on a student’s free time.

The controlling Supreme Court precedent, Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), stipulates that school officials can only censor speech if they can show that it will cause a material disruption or invade the rights of others.

That’s the rub.  Are administrators being a little thin-skinned or are incidents like this truly disruptive?

Brian Hayes, who teaches journalism at Ball State and heads a sequence that prepares students for teaching journalism and the First Amendment, told the SPLC that Casseday's comment does not qualify as disruptive under the Tinker standard. "Is this prohibiting school administrators from doing their job? I doubt it," he said.