Kodo’s Blog

Court Finds For Student In Web FOS Case:

An anonymous reader writes “A student who brought a suit against his middle school has been awarded a settlement after two years of legal battles. USAToday reports that the suit was brought after the school leveled harsh disciplinary measures against the student, based entirely on comments made to his website guestbook.� From the article: “Grayson Barber, who handled the case on behalf of the ACLU, said the school presented no evidence that Dwyer’s comments were threatening or disruptive of school activities. ‘Our schools should encourage debate and political engagement rather than punishing students who provide a forum for free expression.’�

Apparently the NJ Board of Education had to pay-out $117,500USD to this kid for what they did to him. Apparently he had been suspended, benched in his baseball team and banned him from a class trip. They accused him of having Anti-Sematic postings in his guest-book which is what other people use to send messages to the author of the site. He denies the comments were there. The school have also never given an explanation of what rule or policy he apparently broke. The weirdest thing is that this a blog he ran himself, not hosted by the school, on his own time and on his own home computer.

The school deserves everything it got in this case and should make other schools think twice about censoring students on the net instead of offering free speech and collaborating in discussion groups and classes.