Posted on 09/22/2006 1:51:10 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd
Accusations that two 16-year-old students cyber ambushed their assistant principal have landed their parents in legal trouble, highlighting what has become a new battleground for student-educator animosity. Anna Draker, an assistant principal at Clark High School in the Northside Independent School District, filed a civil lawsuit against two students at the school — junior Benjamin Schreiber and sophomore Ryan Todd — and the boys' parents, claiming defamation, libel, negligence and negligent supervision over a page on the popular Web site MySpace.com.
Benjamin also is facing criminal felony charges. Both boys are named in the lawsuit. Their parents, Lisa Schreiber and Lisa and Steve Todd, did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
"This is the most serious, most concerted effort that I've seen a teacher or a school administrator undertake involving a posting on MySpace," said Steve Jones, a professor of communication at the University of Illinois-Chicago and author of "CyberSociety" who has written extensively on Internet use.
"This is pretty remarkable," he said. "I think a lot of people will be watching this."
Draker found out in April that someone had created a page on MySpace, a public free-access Web site popular among students, using her name and picture from the school's Web site. The page was filled with, according to Draker's attorney, Murphy Klasing, lewd, defamatory and obscene comments, pictures and graphics. It was written as though Draker herself had posted the information.
The Web page was up about a month before Draker discovered it.
"By that point, she had no idea how many people in the world had seen it," Klasing said. "We do know it had been seen by numerous individuals, including many students at Clark."
MySpace.com removed the page as soon as Draker contacted them and told them she had not posted the information.
Bexar County Assistant District Attorney Jill Mata would not release information about the case. She did confirm that juvenile charges are pending against a local high school student involving retaliation and fraudulent use of identifying information. Both are third-degree felonies.
Tormenting teachers — from drawing caricatures on notebooks to old-fashioned slam books — is an age-old activity for students, but the Internet has taken the practice to a new level, with students using its anonymous universe to launch attacks against teachers, and for college students, professors. While there has been at least one case where students were criminally charged with impersonation — two Indiana middle schoolers accused of impersonating their principal earlier this year — most of the incidents have only resulted in suspensions.
A dean at Clark brought the Web page to Draker's attention. Besides lewd language, the site also falsely identified Draker as a lesbian. Klasing said Draker, who is married and has small children, was "devastated."
The Web page included instant messages from people Draker didn't know who lived near Clark High and made suggestive, lewd and obscene comments based on the Web page's content.
Northside officials investigated the incident and suspended Benjamin Schreiber for three days. Ryan Todd had to attend a parent conference. Northside's police department was called in to investigate and forwarded their findings to the district attorney.
District spokesman Pascual Gonzalez said schools have little control over what students do on computers away from the school. According to Draker's lawsuit, Ryan Todd admitted that Benjamin Schreiber created the Web site using Ryan's computer. The lawsuit also maintains that both boys have had discipline problems at the school and that Draker has had to discipline Ryan Todd numerous times.
"It's a new era for us dealing with outside Internet activity by kids," Gonzalez said. "There is no school policy that governs it."
Klasing said Draker wants the students to face consequences. She's suing for an unspecified amount for damages for emotional distress, mental anguish, lost wages and court costs, but Klasing said the lawsuit is really about teaching a lesson.
"Primarily, her goal here is accountability," Klasing said.
Jones said kids have been finding ways to ridicule educators for generations, but the venue is different now.
"These technologies are incredibly public and the potential for harm is much greater simply because these comments and criticisms are being disseminated potentially around the world," Jones said. "It's an issue of scale that's particularly difficult to contend with."
I can always republish it for you ~ hey, I got blamed for that darned thing ~ they thought I was the only student smart enough to both type and spell!
As I said, I typed it on an Underwood typewriter with carbon paper copies.
Are you old enough to know what carbon paper is? I guess I should insert a smiley face icon to show that I'm not being snotty :o)
Oops, still smacks of snottiness...
Ouch!! If she's not a lesbian, that's a libel and she has a very good cause of action. Those kids and their parents are going to pay big time.
That's the kind of thing you could get away with legally because it all appears to be truthful. The kids in this case, according to the article, made two HUGE legal mistakes: they structured the web page to look like the assistant principal herself posted it and they included a directly false allegation that she was a lesbian. If high school kids are going to post derogatory material about their teachers and school administrators without running afoul of the law, they have to keep it to provable facts and opinions.
Not understanding 1970s and earlier technology was the thing that destroyed the CBS/DemonRat attempt to fake the Bush ANG memos. Whoever physically produced the actual fakes was probably fairly young, under a lot of time pressure to create them, and didn't even know the tremendous technological changes that have occurred in document creation in the last 20 years, and, hence, produced laughable fakes.
I was a yeoman in the Navy. They locked us in a classroom in San Diego "A" School where we typed on typewriters with unlabeled keys...eight hours a day until we could type 50 WPM with no errors.
Fast forward to several years later when I was the Admiral's Yeoman at Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico. The Navy had sent down some brass from Washington with a big parchment treaty (A beautiful document from The Government Printing Office) that was to be signed by the Navy and the Puerto Rican government officials.
The PR's objected to some part of the agreement and demanded that a certain paragraph be inserted before they would sign it.
The night before, I got pretty well lubed up at the EM Club and was in no condition to do any delicate typing that this required. The Admiral's office had the only typewriter on the base with a carriage big enough to handle the oversized document, so they sent for me at 0500 hrs. to amend the document.
Well a mistake or two was made and parchment doesn't handle erasures well. The next day, The San Juan Star led off their story about the treaty with this opening phrase: "In a poorly typed document, the Navy and ...blah blah blah".
The new CO, Admiral Ronald J. Hayes, a Rear Admiral at that time (later became CINCPAC), had me transferred the next day to the Communications Department.
It was a blessing in disguise, as life became more easy for me there.
Occupational hazard.
Ok, since you seem knowledgeable about this. What's to prevent them from doing all this anonymously? If they can keep their mouth shut and do all there enterring through a library computer or some other more or less public terminal...would it ever have been traced back to them?
I am old enough to know what a memeograph machine is. Can you figure the rest out for yourself? NOTE: no smiley face.
Copy that, Grumpy.
I know it's wrong but the way they messed with Ms "Assistant Principal's" fragile psyche is hilarious. My bet is she's a jackass.
good story
If being gay is so totally normal and acceptable, then whats the harm in being falesly identified as one.
Best wishes! Dopey!
And there shouldn't be. What students do outside the school is none of its business.
You got my attention.
Piss up a rope.
Hey Newbie troll, take a hike.
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