Josh Claybourn has a post about a bunch of kids from East Grand Rapids high school here in Michigan who are in trouble with the school after posting pictures of themselves and other students drinking at parties to their blogs. And it turns out that the school monitors the blogs of students:
Goethal said security officers monitor known sites of local bloggers. The school takes limited action, usually calling parents if they spot stories about parties or other items of concern.
I've got a problem with that. According to the report, none of this behavior took place on school property or at school events. Why, then, is it the school's business at all? It's certainly incumbent on the parents to monitor such things, but not the school. The school can't punish them academically, like with a suspension, but they can prevent them from taking part in extracurricular activities. But even at that, I don't see why they have any authority to punish a student for what that student does in their personal life outside of school.
I have a long history with this school. EGR has a top notch debate team that was begun by a friend of mine and I've known dozens of kids from that school as well as their parents and some fo their teachers. About 17 years ago, I took them to their first out of state tournament and before long they were one of the top teams in the nation and stayed so for a long time. I have a lot of great memories of a bunch of really great kids from there that I got to coach against and judge over the years, and I was just there three months ago to visit old friends.
It's a very wealthy community that really values education. It's also the school that the movie American Pie is based on. The writer of that movie went to EGR and anyone who knows the town can recognize all of the local landmarks that were fictionalized for the movie. The hot dog place they were having lunch at the day after the prom in the first movie is based on Yesterdog, which has been there forever (and has good hot dogs, I might add).
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The Facebook story is circulating on Rightie blogs right now.
My school did that as well. 2 friends of mine were reported for drinking at a party my freshman year in HS--they were kicked off the basketball team for the year. A little creepy that they monitor students' blogs, though.
Huh. I think a friend of mine went there, then. Or maybe it was a rival school--I know he's mentioned the American Pie connection. Is there a Forest Hills somewhere in that area?
Since EGR was my school's great rival in debate, I suppose this is where I'm supposed to boo and hiss.
And Yesterdog has great hotdogs.
Tara wrote:
Yep, that's a rival school nearby.
Tanooki Joe wrote:
Where did you go to school that EGR was your rival in debate? And when was that? We may well know many people in common.
Is there a Forest Hills somewhere in that area?
Yes.
I'm conflicted about this. On the one hand, kids that have committed horrible crimes (Columbine for instance) have posted stuff that foreshadowed their actions. Also, the blogs are very public and there is no expectation of privacy. In all likelihood, these kids are looking for (craving?) attention. And paying attention to kids during their teen years can have profound benefits on the kids throughout their lives. On the other hand, paying a school administrator to surf the internet looking for this stuff seems a bit like Big Brother. These particular actions happen independent from the school. However, the effects of alcoholism and drug use affect the school. Geez, kids nowadays drink beer for breakfast and smoke a joint before leaving the house. I served as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (kinda like a Big Brother/Big Sister program) and saw these issues first hand. Undoubedtly, substance abuse is a big issue that every school deals with. Quite often the parents of these students have similar problems and consequently, aren't paying attention to their children. If there were a group of concerned parents that surfed the internet and notified parents and/or the school, then would there by any concern at all? What if these parents pooled a few bucks and paid someone to do it on their behalf?
I resisted posting about this originally because I know you're friends with him Ed, but Josh also tried to get a Democratic candidate for sheriff in trouble by sending the paper blog photos of his underage daughter drinking:
http://www.animalswithinanimals.com/stallio/2006/02/smearin-agora.html
What value is there in ratting out an underage college student for drinking just because her Democrat father is running for sheriff in an entirely different city in an entirely different county? Josh's claim that somehow the family of a sheriff or a judge should be held to a higher standard is a ridiculous attempt to cover his own rear for being caught up in something so shameless.
One more example of why I stopped reading "In the Agora" months ago -- some of its posters (and yes, I mean Josh specifically) have turned away from discussions of honest conservative philosophy to rank partisan hackery.
David wrote:
But there is no evidence that a kid who has a few beers at a party on a Friday night is going to school drunk or taking drugs. In fact, I would venture to say that for every 100 kids who drinks at a party there's maybe 1 kid who is going to go to school that way. I'm all for parents monitoring this sort of thing, and I'm all for schools monitoring what kids do at school. But I don't like the idea of schools doing the parents' job in this regard. Is it illegal? Of course not. As you noted, a blog is publicly available and there is no expectation of privacy. It just makes me uncomfortable.
Apologies, the race is actually for Indiana's 8th district, the sheriff in question is currently the sheriff for Vanderburgh County.
I have been growing more concerned for the inability of our nation's youth to realize that their use of blogs and sites such as myspace is neither private nor protected. Literally millions of teens are feeling quite free in publishing online many of their private and confidential activities and information without the least bit of conscious thought put towards wondering who might read it all. Security officers and law enforcement personnel are assigned in most metropolitan areas to monitor the kids online, often creating entrapment situations for sex, drugs, theft, etc. Likewise the kids seem to think that publishing photos of themselves and friends at parties, engaged in sexual activity, revealing the privacy of others and so forth, have no consequences. They need to wake up, get educated, become aware of the dangers.
Likewise i wonder just how the "security officers" determine the actuality of evidence of an illegal activity. A picture of a student holding a container that appears to be a beer does not present any physical actual evidence whatsoever that the student was consuming alcohol. Nor would i think a published online confession provide sufficient evidence of said activities. Wouldn't there need to be some testing?? or at least some corroborating physical evidence????
Jeff-
This is the first I'd heard of this. I would have to say that I disagree with Josh's assertion that the item is newsworthy because her father is in law enforcement. Unless one had evidence that he had encouraged her drinking or accepted it or done something to get her out of trouble for doing it in some way, I don't think it's relevant. She's an adult and she makes her own choices that he cannot be held responsible for. If it was taking place in his jurisdiction and he found out about it and didn't do anything about it, it would be relevant. As it is, I don't see it.
David wrote:
"Geez, kids nowadays drink beer for breakfast and smoke a joint before leaving the house."
Nowadays? Students were doing that at *my* High School in the mid-70's.
I know that underage drinking is a problem for some kids and it's certainly not something we should be encouraging. But frankly, I think it's easy to overreact to it. I've known lots of kids, including several from this very high school, who went to parties and drank or even smoked pot and turned out just fine. Just as I think some adults are mature enough to handle it and some aren't, I think some teenagers are the same way. The best student I had when I coached debate liked to party in high school. He was known to take a puff or two (or three) now and then. He was also a 4.0 student who graduated with honors from Harvard Law School. Contrary to the hysteria that so often surrounds these kinds of issues, smoking a joint or drinking a few beers is not generally the path to destruction. The vast, vast majority of people who do those things (and personally, I very rarely drink and don't do drugs either) do them occassionally and responsibly and live a perfectly functional life.
Good question. Is it time for the students to return the favour and keep tabs on the teachers and administrators? I mean, if the offschool activities of the kids is relevent to the teachers, then the offschool activities of the teachers is just as relevent to the kids and their parents.
Indeed. In fact, the only things that "troubled" teens really have in common is their age. Let's ban the ages of 14-19!
didn't know where else to post this info:
Randi is one of my heros and a figure who should garner respect from anyone. I wish him a speedy recovery.
I've read about employers that forbid their employees from smoking or drinking while not working, and found that pretty frightening. But scary as that is, at least you can choose not to work for that employer if you don't want to. Kids can't choose not to go to school. Especially given that, there is simply no justification for school officials to use what kids do in their spare time against them.
East Kentwood. I was never on debate myself, but I knew many students on the team and the debate coach.
This all reminds me of a story I heard on NPR of a judge who issued M.I.P.'s to some students. Months later, he googled his name and found a blog with a video with those students drinking alcohol and mocking the judge. Hoisted by their own petard, indeed.
Do any of you folks have high-school age kids? What I'm surprised at is that anyone is surprised at all about any of this. Connecting sanctions within school to activities unrelated to school has been a totally taken for granted part of high school life for a long time, at least where I live, and I would find it hard to believe it's any different anywhere else in the country.
Where I live, to participate in sports (and I'm pretty sure other extracurricular activities), kids have to sign a contract promising not to drink etc. No contract, no participation. We're not talking about "I won't drink at school," we're talking about "I won't drink, attend parties where there is alcohol, etc." Now you might say that if the kid signs the contract, she ought to honor it. But as Gretchen points out -- school is compulsory, so the kids have very little choice. (We homeschooled, but the kids played sports for the local public school and had to sign the contracts to play.) Not only that, schools have a near-monopoly on an awful lot of activities kids participate in, especially sports.
Each school has variations on the policy, but I don't think there's any school in my state that doesn't claim the right at some level to punish kids within the school context for things they do outside it. Just being present at a party where there's alcohol (even if you're not drinking yourself) can get you suspended from sports/activities for a year. Of course, the enforcement of the rules is, shall we say, selective, not to mention abused, with people reporting other people or not, lying to get other people in trouble or themselves out of it, etc.
Besides the objections people are raising on this thread, I have also always found it troubling (it would be laughable in its idiocy if it weren't so sad for the kids) that for some kids, sports are the last thing keeping them from disconnecting with school entirely. So we punish them by taking away sports, because of something unconnected with school?
As a side note, in the state where I live, for all practical purposes local public schools own the rights to the athletic talents of the kids who live in their districts. A kid can transfer (without moving, i.e. by paying tuition) to another school because it has a great music program, or teaches Japanese, or whatever, without interference or penalty. But if the kid is an athlete, then the sending school has to sign off on the transfer or the kid can't play sports at the new school. I mention this because it is just another way in which the schools claim rights over kids in ways that I think are outrageous. (Yes, I know there would be abuses...recruiting of athletes etc... But there are always abuses...and there are other ways of trying to deal with them. This rule is really about other things. But I am already far enough away from the direct topic.)
Tanooki Joe wrote:
No kidding. Depending on when that was, the coach would either have been been Pete Beatty or Ken Ozanich (or if you're as old as I am, the infamous JT Young). One of my best friends went to East Kentwood and we debated against each other for 4 years in high school (and as I love to remind him to this day, my record against him was something like 43-0), but that was from 81-85. The last East Kentwood class that I coached against and knew relatively well was the Kelly Steele/Jason Bowters group and that was nearly 15 years ago, but I knew the kids there the last couple years as well.
Last year when I went back and judged a couple tournaments, the first one was East Kentwood. It had literally been 13 years or so since I'd been to a tournament and Ken Ozanich was the first one to see me as I walked down the hall and he actually recognized me from probably 100 feet away and said, "Holy cow. Ed Brayton?" Do you know Jeff Holland?
After Columbine, I feel the school would be remiss if it did not monitor its student's blog postings. However, what students do outside school, like drinking, is generally not the school's business. However, I would approve of these youngsters being put on a list of "students to be monitored more closely" while they are in school. Then if they show up at school drunk, appropriate action can be taken.