Your Online Persona

A college student, Amanda LaBonar, writes: Personal responsibility needed when blogging

The list of examples [of students disciplined for online activity] can go on, along with a strongly worded and controversial debate over free speech suppression. However, here's the thing that gets me: how stupid and irresponsible people are being. Freedom of speech comes with personal responsibility. In many ways I feel that the authoritative actions that many schools have take are unjust; however, students must think twice about what they're posting. [snip]

We complain about free speech being taken away, but we are giving away our privacy without a second thought.

I'm not bowing to the administration or running scared that something I might post will get me more then a slap on the wrist. I'm being realistic. These posts reflect you, and you never know who is looking at them. We can't just point at the administration and scream foul play without also examining and owning up to our own personal responsibility.

Thanks to Anne Davis for the link.

More at
Part I--Blogging, social networking sites, schools, and risk for teen users
Part II -- Schools Banning Access and Banning Students' Online Presence
Part III--An Overblown Fear: The Internet Predator
Part IV--The Real Risk: Other Students' Cruel, Rude, or Illegal Behavior (or the Poster's Own Cruel, Rude, or Illegal Behavior)
Part V--The Benefits of Blogging, Personal and Educational
Part VI--What Should Parents and Schools Do?

Comments

[Derek]

That's an interesting take on the issue, particularly for a writer. While I certainly agree, that with free speech comes certain responsibility, I still hesitate to support a view that tolerates -- even empowers -- an academic institution's ability to punish students for expressing themselves, in whatever range, through forums not within the scope of that institution's purview.

Had I known anyone in undergrad, friend or foe, who had been called to the carpet for their online writings (short of anything that might constitute libel), as a newspaper editor and an individual deeply invested into free speech -- however unappealing or inappropriate that speech might be -- I'd have raised a shitstorm the likes of which my college has never seen.

But then, that's just me.

A necessary corollary of the freedom of speech is the freedom to speak "inappropriately" -- else that freedom is robbed of meaning. Who decides what constitutes appropriate? A principal? A dean? A president?