It's difficult to see how the alledged "cyber bullying" of this young students towards her English teacher can be compared with the cyber bullying which led to the suicides of 13 year old Megan Meier and 15 year old Phoebe Prince.
biglinmarshall.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=crimenews&thread=1104&page=1Katherine Evans, here in 2009, was suspended from high school in 2007 for using her Facebook page to knock a high school English teacher.
www.aolnews.com/article/judge-students-facebook-page-is-protected-by-free-speech/19359849 QUOTE:
(Feb. 16) -- Katherine Evans wanted everyone to know: Ms. Phelps was the worst English teacher she'd ever had.
So Evans, a Florida high school senior and honors student, posted a Facebook page to publicly criticize the teacher. Two months later, though, Evans was suspended for cyberbullying the teacher with her very precisely named group, "Ms. Sarah Phelps is the worst teacher I've ever had," on the social-networking site.
On Monday, a federal judge ruled that Evans, now a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Florida, can sue her former principal, Peter Bayer, for suspending her, saying that her Facebook page is protected by free speech. Evans is asking that the three-day suspension in 2007 be cleared from her academic record.
Phillippe Diederich, The New York Times
Katherine Evans, here in 2009, was suspended from high school in 2007 for using her Facebook page to knock a high school English teacher.
Though Evans' case is far from over, it's clear that the First Amendment seems to have won precedence over the fight against cyberbullying. And many say the case is likely to shape the legal debates over free speech on the Web.
Maria Kayanan of the Florida branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of Evans' lawyers, called the ruling a victory for free speech on the Internet. "It upholds the principle that the right to freedom of speech and expression in America does not depend on the technology used to convey opinions and ideas," she told The New York Times.
In his opinion, Judge Barry Garber said the Facebook page is protected under the First Amendment because it wasn't violent. "It was an opinion of a student about a teacher that was published off-campus, did not cause any disruption on-campus, and was not lewd, vulgar, threatening or advocating illegal or dangerous behavior," he wrote.
On Twitter, the reaction to the judge's ruling was unsurprisingly supportive of Evans. "These academic thugs really believe [they] own the world," one man wrote Monday, in a clear reference to school officials.
The debate over cyberbullying is an intense one. Across the country, threatening speech made by students online has sometimes ended in violence. In Massachusetts, for example, school officials are blaming cyberbullying for the death of 17-year-old Phoebe Prince. The high school student, who had recently moved from Ireland, committed suicide last month after being branded an "Irish slut" on Facebook.
More recently, in Newburyport, Mass., last week, three 14-year-olds were charged with identity theft for allegedly creating a fake Facebook page to bully a classmate they thought was an outcast and too smart, police said.
The most notorious case of cyberbullying happened in 2006, when Lori Drew, a Missouri woman, posed as a teenage boy named "Josh" and befriended 13-year-old Megan Meier on MySpace. After about a month, Drew ended the friendship and sent Meier malicious messages. "You are a bad person and everybody hates you," she wrote. "The world would be a better place without you."
Meier, who was already suffering from depression, hanged herself. When prosecutors charged Drew with violating MySpace's terms of service, bloggers became concerned that free speech on the Internet would be limited. But Drew's conviction on misdemeanor counts of accessing a computer without authorization was overturned last year.
Across the Web, bloggers agreed with Garber when he said Evans' Facebook page was offensive, not dangerous.
At the Business Insider, Erin Geiger Smith said it was "difficult to see how, aside from technology, it's any different than a student who writes a note at home (which is where Evans created the site) whining about a disagreement with their teacher." Smith says it's a clear case of the First Amendment at work. "If she had done it at school and it was disruptive, that would be different," Smith wrote. "But if it's an outside-of-school activity that remains opinion-based (i.e., isn't slanderous), then this is just a byproduct of technology and the First Amendment."
The New York Times reports that the case could go to trial this spring.