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I was in Naperville, Illinois about two weeks ago for a cyberbullying summit sponsored by the Illinois Attorney General’s Office.  The audience was comprised of select stakeholders in education, law enforcement, and technology industry.  The most relevant companies and constituencies were there.  Attorney General Lisa Madigan was on hand to kick the event off with some opening remarks.  Michelle Collins from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) followed with some general comments about cyberbullying and sexting and highlighted some of the efforts of the NCMEC in online safety education and prevention.  Next, I participated in a panel of experts along with Hemanshu Nigam from MySpace, Andrew Chaulk from the Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force, and Nancy Willard from the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use.  We each provided a short introduction to our background and initiatives, then opened it up to the audience for questions and discussion.  As expected, it was a great discussion.

During lunch, Sarah Migas from the Illinois AG’s office described their efforts to educate youth, parents, educators and others about online safety issues.  In the afternoon we all were broken up into smaller groups to discuss in depth a particular scenario.  My group (Go Red Team!) discussed a sexting case from a few months ago.  We brainstormed possible prevention and response solutions and then presented our analysis to the larger group as a whole.  All in all it was a great event.

It is essential to bring all of these players together on a regular basis to develop a coordinated community response to cyberbullying.  Having pretty much everyone at the table really made for some interesting discussions.  The Illinois AG’s office is very much ahead of the curve with respect to these issues.  Stay tuned for more great resources from this group in the future.

An interesting controversy has emerged in the last couple of weeks over the word “meep.”  What does meep even mean?  Frankly, it doesn’t really matter.  In fact there are numerous and varied definitions of, and uses for, the word meep.  The most frequent use among adolescents, it seems, is to replace an inappropriate word with meep, as in “What the meep!?!”

So the recent controversy emerged when students at Danvers High School in Massachusetts threatened to disrupt the school environment by muttering, yelling, and collectively spewing the word meep during class time.  Danvers Principal Thomas Murray was tipped off about the planned disruption and preemptively threatened to suspend students who spoke the word or showed up to school with the word printed on clothing.  This, of course, incited folks from around the country to contact Mr. Murray to express their dissatisfaction with this seemingly ludicrous policy.  To be sure, the courts have ruled that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”  That said, school officials do have the right to restrict speech and/or discipline students for speech or behavior that results in (or has a high likelihood of resulting in) a substantial and material disruption of the learning environment.  In this case, I think it is clear that the students involved were in fact planning a substantial disruption.  So, it doesn’t matter that the speech involved wasn’t really even a real word.

When I was in middle school, my classmates and I started humming in English class.  The teacher was getting pretty upset by this and was walking around the classroom trying to identify the offending party.  When he went to one side of the classroom, students in the other side would start humming.  When he moved to the other side, the other students stepped up and continued the humming.  Clearly, the act of humming is not obscene or otherwise generally subject to discipline in any environment outside of the school.  But at school, if it causes or threatens to cause a substantial disruption, it can (and should be) stopped.  In our case, the teacher refused to administer our planned quiz until the humming stopped.  It didn’t, so we all failed the quiz.  To this day I have a hard time identifying prepositions!

This is an important case because as much as I agree with everyone that restricting the use of a nonsensical word is in itself nonsensical, it is necessary that school administrators have the ability to maintain an appropriate, civil, and safe learning environment at school.  Educators need the support of parents and other community members when they take actions to ensure an appropriate school climate.  This is especially true since many forms of relational aggression, including cyberbullying, are often more subtle and therefore may not be automatically identifiable as something warranting intervention.   At the same time, they also need to be held accountable when their policies or practices cross the line of being overly restrictive.  In the case of meep, from what I have seen, I think they were being reasonable in their efforts to prevent a disruption from occurring.  What do you think?  Is Principal Murray going too far with this?

My colleagues and I have been discussing the phenomenon of sexting in great detail recently, in light of the actions of two Texas school districts.  Before the beginning of this new school year, the Houston Independent school district (one of the largest in the nation) and the Dallas-Fort Worth school district banned sending sexually-explicit photos or messages over cell phones.  Some argue that this action is paternalistic, outdated, tyrannical, and even possibly unconstitutional.  Others applaud the decision, which reflects that administrators are finally treating this matter seriously.

Personally, I’m glad that the district is focusing in on the problem, but I’m not sure if this policy will actually be useful as students tend not to be deterred by heavy-handed rule-making.  I also don’t want its presence to take the place of purposed educational efforts to teach students about the responsible use of technology.  This sometimes happens when laws or policies are implemented as a way of quickly “dealing” with an issue without understanding its fundamental causes.

When giving presentations, I talk a lot about the need to change prevailing social norms regarding what is acceptable and unacceptable in the minds of youth.  I feel that our prevention and response efforts are going to be less than ideal and fruitful if we cannot effectively counter what society and the media are hammering into the minds of adolescents.  If the dominant message our kids are hearing is that sex and sexuality lead to popularity and celebrity status with very little (if any) public or personal fallout, youth will continue to push the proverbial envelope and the line between right and wrong in this area will be increasingly obscured.  Maybe that’s fine – maybe that’s part of our inevitable march forward into modernity.  But maybe it portends more problems than we’re going to be able to handle.

I was talking to a school administrator yesterday…and she posed a question that I couldn’t clearly answer because it doesn’t seem there is a clear answer.  So I wanted to see if any of our readers had some thoughts about it.

If a parent comes to you (you as an educator in the school system) and says that their child is being anonymously cyberbullied by someone from school, and their child is being affected at school because of it – and you do your investigation and find out the identity of the bully (and that it definitely is someone from school) – do you have to keep the identity of that bully private because of FERPA?  What if the parent demands to know who it is, arguing that such information could help that parent better protect the child in the future?  Furthermore, if the parent of the victim adamantly demands to know what the school is doing to specifically discipline that bully and address the issue, do you have to share that information – or can you just say that your school is dealing with the problem and the parent should let you know if it continues?  How exactly does FERPA play a role in these situations?

We’ve covered this issue a couple of times before on this blog, but given the interest I thought I would respond to some of the comments that have been posted and provide some insight gained from discussions I have had with folks over the past few months.  Some people have suggested that students have effectively no right to privacy in schools.  On its face, this is patently false – students do in fact have *some* privacy rights in schools.  That said, the rules are different in schools than in other public places.

All Americans are protected against “unreasonable” searches and seizures (4th Amendment), and what can be classified as “reasonable” varies depending on the context.  In schools, educators can generally search student property if (and only if) they have a good reason to believe that evidence exists therein which will reveal a violation of school policy.  If that evidence is found, the offending student may be subject to an administrative sanction by the school (e.g., detention, suspension, etc).  For example, if a credible student tells a principal that another student at school has a phone in the classroom that includes the answers to the algebra exam, then a search may be allowable given these circumstances.

This ability to search can be contrasted with that of law enforcement, who are required to abide by a higher standard.  School (or other) police officers must have probable cause that evidence of a crime exists in order to conduct a search of property.  To be clear, mere suspicion is not enough for law enforcement officers.  They must be able to articulate to a judge that probable cause existed (either before the search is conducted or after at trial).  For example, if a credible student informs a school resource officer (a sworn police officer) that another student has a gun in his or her backpack, clearly the officer would be able to search the backpack.

If we apply these principles to the issue of cell phones in the classroom, we know that educators or law enforcement officers can in fact search a cell phone under some circumstances.  Either way, there has to be some articulable level of knowledge that the cell phone contains evidence of a violation of school policy or criminal law (depending on who is performing the search).  In the opinion of many, simple possession of the phone in the classroom, while in itself a violation of school policy, does not provide license to search that phone by anyone.

Always remember that neither Sameer nor I are attorneys, and so this should not be interpreted as legal advice.  Furthermore, these are very complicated issues that cannot be adequately covered in a short blog posting.  There are many exceptions to the basic principles outlined above.  As always, consult an attorney who specializes in school and/or privacy law.  Even they, however, often disagree as to how these laws and court rulings can or should be interpreted.   Case law and precedent are currently being formed as schools and courts wrestle with these issues.  If you are aware of any incidents that have gone to court related to this topic, please pass them along so that we can analyze and distill what can be learned from them.