Blog Assignment Unit 2

I absolutely disagree with the point that school officials don't have the authority to regulate students' off campus blogging.  I do agree with the counterpoint argument that school officials should have broad leeway in regulating student blogs. In dealing with todays' climate of bullying, and the devastating aftermath of "so-called cyber-bulling" (Hudson, 70). I believe it is the schools responsibility to protect their students (and teachers) from being preyed upon in the form of cyber harassment by mean, aggressive, losers they are forced into going to public school with. In my opinion, rights to privacy stop the minute you plaster your privacy on the Internet. I found the viewpoint that students have rights to privacy compelling, and while I would agree with that viewpoint say 10 years ago, today things have definitely changed. You cannot tell me that something written on a public blog is 100 percent protected by free speech if it singles out and harasses private people in a world wide forum. Individuals need to exercise good judgment and restraint when speaking or writing publicly about others. According to Hudson, many believe that student blogs are like journals, and that schools should not be able to punish students for "expressions created entirely off campus" (62). Well, I believe that a blog is not like a journal. Private journals are kept in private. Online journals are anything but private. What is the point in letting snotty high school student's harass their teachers and classmates on the worldwide stage of the Internet? Wouldn't it be better to give them minor consequences now? Instead of major consequences later?  Like a traffic ticket before a car crash? Maybe in a couple of years they will have matured enough to realise that the world is not fair, does not owe them anything, and opinions are almost useless without an education. Punishing students who bully over the Internet is the right thing to do for the bullied student, and the only rational option in dealing with a school bully. Hoping they will stop bullying on their own is like hoping a snake won't bite on it's own. Are we so afraid of the bully's attorneys that he/she is given free reign over the school via the Internet? Besides, it is the schools obligation to protect all of their students (and I believe staff) from harassment. "The paramount duty of school officials is to provide a safe learning environment for their students" (Hudson, 71). That environment does not stop at the doorstep of the school, because school relationships do not stop there anymore. Bullying has no curfew, and does not stop at a certain hour of day, or in a certain location of a city  because most bully's now have access to the Internet. With teens feeling empowered by their rights to bully their teachers, principals, and fellow students, schools face new challenges they had better be prepared for. I hope high schools around the country are prepared to fight for their right to protect their staff as well as their students from ugly harassment by malicious youth. These rights far outweigh the bullies right to harass their school and teachers under the banner of free speech. As long as these troubled kids are in public school, and under age I think the school officials have every right to protect their staff, and good kids from the bully's reckless taunting via the Internet. There is such a thing as good, and bad in this world. Giving bad kids a free pass in this area teaches them nothing. When they are grown the world will give them quit a shock, and maybe then they will have their eyes opened to the destruction their words can cause.