A Little Humanity Goes A Long Way: School Admins, Police Officer Ditch Policy-Limited Thinking To Make A Difference In Teens' Lives

from the ...-in-a-sea-of-cyborgs dept

As we're all perhaps painfully aware, school administrators and bad cops are frequent targets here at Techdirt. Those covered here are usually the worst of the worst, not necessarily representative of the whole. But there are plenty of lesser evils that go ignored every day, the end result of too much power and bad incentives. Adding cops to schools has exponentially increased the number of terrible decisions being made.

But sometimes, those in these positions of power use it in a positive way. They're perfectly capable of bending rules or showing compassion, but it honestly seems as though those efforts are few and far between. They're also less likely to receive widespread coverage. So, here's one from each category, showing what happens when cops/administrators decide to be human beings, rather than just the public-facing interface of an emotionless system.

The first story (sent in by an unnamed Techdirt reader) details what one school did to make sure a student's mother could see her daughter graduate before she succumbed to a terminal disease.

Battling cancer for four years, Maryland mom Darlene Sugg set a goal — she wanted to see her daughter Megan graduate from high school.

Last week, as her condition took a dire turn, Sugg got her wish with the help of school administrators who threw together a bedside cap-and-gown ceremony for the teen a month before the official commencement date.

There wasn't a dry eye in the room Thursday as Glen Burnie High School Principal Vickie Plitt read a speech she had written just for Megan. Darlene Sugg managed to open her own eyes during the touching address.

The school administrators not only allowed Megan Sugg to hold her own personal graduation program early and off-campus, but it sent its own personnel to ensure it happened with all the dignity of the on-campus ceremony. Instead of deferring to policy and/or expressing a reluctance to make exceptions (out of the irrational fear that granting one means granting exceptions for everyone), the school honored this mother's request.

The importance of showing compassion can't be overstated. Schools tend to be places that prioritize standardized testing and the ability to line up in an orderly fashion over helping individuals explore their own strengths and weaknesses. A cohesive whole is almost always preferable to a school full of unique humans. That a school would go out of its way to allow a daughter to share perhaps the proudest moment of her life with the woman who raised her speaks volumes to the rest of the student body. Hopefully, this will also reach the eyes and ears of other administrators who may find themselves in situations requiring a more human touch (and preferably not by limiting exceptions to those involving imminent death) and push them towards closing the policy manual and addressing the person as a person, instead of as a problem.

The other story details the efforts one police officer made after being contacted by a teen who simply didn't want to go home.

A few weeks ago, 13-year-old Cameron Simmons called Sumter police because he was upset after fighting with his mom. The teenager told police he didn't want to live in the house with his family anymore.

Officer Gaetano Acerra responded to the call.

"I said, "You have it good, you have a roof over your head,'" said Acerra.

Officer Acerra's first response may have sounded a bit glib. And perhaps it was. But when Acerra escorted the teen back to the house he wanted to escape, he saw something that changed his outlook.

The officer brought Simmons home, and realized the boy didn't have a real bed. In fact, Simmons didn't have nearly anything he needed for a bedroom.

On top of the tense relationship with his mom, Simmons had nearly nothing to call his own. Acerra took it upon himself to change that.

A few weeks after the call, Acerra showed up at Simmon's house with a truck full of gifts.

"Bed, TV, desk, chair, a Wii game system that somebody donated to me because of the story I told them," said Acerra.

Acerra made Simmons' home a better place to be. Even if Acerra can't fix everything wrong in this teen's life, he at least gave him something to sleep on and a few things to make spending time there a little more pleasurable. He also gave Simmons his personal phone number and told him to call him anytime.

Acerra said he didn't do it for personal acclaim but simply because "it was the right thing to do." Once again, humanity shines through. Acerra could have simply returned the child to his home and walked away. If Social Services hasn't delivered the case to the PD, there's no reason to care what Simmons' quality of life is. Runaways tend to be picked up on truancy or curfew charges, rather than asked why they would choose to leave a situation that at least puts "a roof over their heads."

A few extra minutes with a troubled youth exposed one of the reasons Simmons wanted out. There was not much "home" at home. Now there is. And if things unrelated to his new bedroom setup get worse, Simmons has someone he can call -- a one-man rescue unit named Officer Gaetano Acerra.

It's understandably hard for police officers to view citizens as anything more than another potential problem. That's the nature of the job. Arrestees are hardly distinguishable from the rest of public -- the only difference is the handcuffs. Not every criminal looks like one. But Acerra's willingness to do just a little more than what was required (return child to home) changed that child's life, and possibly Acerra's as well.

Filed Under: helping, police, school administrators

'Cyberbullied' School Administration May Have Violated Student's First Amendment Rights By Suspending Him

from the the-most-power;-the-thinnest-skin dept

All the cyberbullying policies and laws being put into place to protect kids seem to be invoked most frequently to protect adults -- specifically, the adults who are responsible for the crafting of these new rules. Another case of school administrators being "cyberbullied" has hit the courts. This one stems from a disgruntled student who was unhappy with his treatment during the basketball season.

Following the season's final game, Rosario was out to dinner with his family and sent a series of crass and offensive tweets about school administrators and his coach:

1. Mr. Isaacs is a b*tch too
2. I hope Coach brown gets f*cked in the *ss by 10 black d*cks
3. Now I can tweet whatever I want and I hope one of y'all mother f*ckers snitch on me
4. Fuck coach browns bitch *ss
5. Finally this b*tch *ss season is over
6. Aiight I'm done y'all can go snitch now like before
7. Oh yea and Mr. DInkel's square *ss
8. AND Ms. Evans b*tch *ss boyfriend too He a p*ssy ass n*gg* tryna talk shit while walking away

Etiquette breach (while at family dinner) aside, school administrators were not happy. They punished Rosario for his tweets under a cyberbullying statute. The text of the statute read as follows:

"A member of the board of trustees of a school district, any employee of the board of trustees, including, without limitation, an administrator, principal, teacher or other staff member, or any pupil shall not engage in bullying cyber-bullying, harassment or intimidation on the premises of any public school, at any activity sponsored by a public school, or on any school bus."[emphasis added]

As you can see from the emphasis Venkat Balasubramani added, this collection of tweets should have remained outside the purview of the policy used to suspend Rosario. But that didn't stop the offended parties from kicking the student out of school. Unfortunately for the administration, Rosario's family took them to court, searching for injunctive relief from the suspension. (Rosario was ultimately allowed to transfer to a different school.) That was denied due to lack of irreparable harm and the school district filed a motion to dismiss. That didn't go quite as smoothly.

Rosario's family brought a "slew of other claims," but most notable is the First Amendment claim, which the court will allow to move forward.

As to Rosario's First Amendment claim, the defendants argued that the speech in question was not protected speech at all because it was "racist, violent, offensive, and hateful." The court (correctly) rejects this argument saying that the only legal basis for the speech in question to possibly be unprotected is obscenity, and this only applies to one tweet.

The court also notes that school administrators can discipline students for off-campus speech, but they need to show "substantial disruption" has occurred on campus in order to justify suspensions or expulsions. This district's policy covers a very limited area -- Balasubramani points out that its specific wording makes it unlikely to be enforceable against "activities in cyberspace," no matter if these activities happened during school events or on school grounds.

Cyberbullying policies have the built-in potential to cripple free speech, thanks to the general shift towards subjectivity, rather than objectivity. Beyond that, these policies seem to encourage a culture of heightened sensitivity and overreaction in far too many administrators.

There must be something in school administrators' DNA that causes a heightened reaction when they see their name mentioned in social media. The tweets were ill-advised at best and crass, depressing even. But I wonder whether the school would have been better off using this as a teaching moment rather than taking a harsher disciplinary approach that was not necessarily on solid First Amendment grounds.

The fact that the school relied on the cyberbullying statute is telling, and a good illustration that these types of statutes are often used in an unintended manner, to improperly suppress speech. It's a stretch at best to argue that tweets from a private account—that would not have reached the coach or administrators absent their inquiry—somehow amounted to "cyber-bullying".

This last point is also rather crucial. The district punished a student for tweets administrators never would have seen without jumping through some extra hoops. Rosario's Twitter account was private, meaning these were only shared with followers. While the court doesn't agree this gives Rosario an "expectation of privacy" in regards to his claims of Fourth Amendment violations, it does bring into question how much work administrators had to do simply to recover the tweets that offended them so much. It should have been a teachable moment, or at worst, something that could have been ignored.

Filed Under: cyberbullying, first amendment, free speech, school administrators, suspensions, tweets