Slippery slope. The school is not just another private entity -- it is a public school, i.e., a government agency. There should be limits on how much ability the school has to retaliate against students for legal off-campus activity. Saying that they have a free hand to punish such behavior opens the door for other governmental bodies to use punitive means to silence critics.
Of all the comments I have read so far yours is the only one that comes close to understanding the fundamental conflict.
Government schools mean government force!
Unless a parent can ransom ( in the form of private tuition or homeschooling expenses) their child from the government school, that child and his parent are under the threat of **police action** to serve time in their government indoctrination camp!
Police threat and government schools go hand in hand and this is why there is a constitutional conflict. If this had been a private school with a private contract made between the parents and the private school their would have been no constitutional issue raised whatsoever.
Of course the **only** solution is to completely abolish all government schools. The state requires that all children to be fed but doesn't run compulsory and tax-funded grocery stores. The state can insist that parents make a good faith effort to educate their children without being in the business of owning and running schools.
> Slippery slope. The school is not just another private entity — it is a public school, i.e., a government agency.
True. And Student Government is an extramural activity, not part of the core curriculum that the school is obligated to deliver. A requirement of that Student Government must surely be that its members enjoy a good, healthy, productive working relationship with the School Administration members.
It can be argued that this girl, by calling one of them a “Douche-bag” in a public forum (her blog) has compromised that requirement beyond repair.
(yes, adults are supposed to be bigger than that, but...)
> There should be limits on how much ability the school has to retaliate against students for legal off-campus activity.
It was off-campus, but also was very public: a blog isn’t the same thing as a private diary. Everybody in the world, presumably, can read it — that’s the whole point of blogging.
What she did was actually worse than taking out an ad in the local paper and calling the Principal a Douche-bag. Presumably, if I could be bothered to look for it, I could read her blog all the way over here, in New Zealand.
> Saying that they have a free hand to punish such behavior opens the door for other governmental bodies to use punitive means to silence critics.
In truth, they do already. It isn’t right that it is so, but it happens all the time.
I guess this child just got her first lesson in Realpolitik from the School of Hard Knocks. She ought to be grateful that it happened in a relatively-safe forum. It’s a valuable lesson.