A Cheerleader's Vulgar Message Prompts a First Amendment Showdown

[meadowlander]

56. Do you think they should though?

School is one of the only places American citizens are legally required to be at any given time.

In placing that requirement on students to attend classes with strangers who may be hostile to them, I think there is also a special obligation to protect the health and safety of students that the state are putting in that situation.

And I think you can argue that that obligation extends to behavior that happens off school grounds if the impetus for the behavior is the fact that the state is forcing these two people to spend six hours a day in each others' company.

My niece is gay and some of the other students at her school were cyber-bullying the shit out of her and the school intervened with the other girls' parents. Fortunately they accepted their responsibility for raising little shitheads and put a stop to it but if they had gone the court route, I don't think it would have been an open and shut case of "it didn't happen on school property, therefore the school needs to butt out."

Schools are a special class of community within a community and I don't think that community exists only 8-3 Monday to Friday on school property.