School Officials Overreach Boundaries
In a disturbing story coming out of Minnesota, over 100 kids have been suspended or punished by their school. Why? Was it because they were caught cheating in school? Misbehaving? Fighting? Smoking pot behind the bleachers
Nope, none of that. In fact, they didn’t break any rules while on school property. Instead, school officials of Eden Prairie High School found photos on Facebook of the students drinking at a party. Then, somehow they thought it was their job to punish the kids.
Eden Prairie High School administrators have reprimanded more than 100 students and suspended some from sports and other extracurricular activities after obtaining Facebook photos of students partying, several students said Tuesday.
Danny O’Leary, a senior who plays lacrosse, said his dean displayed four Facebook photos of O’Leary holding drinks and told him he was in “a bit of trouble.” One photo shows him holding a can of Coors beer, another a shot of rum, he said. In yet another, O’Leary is pictured holding his friend’s 40-ounce container of beer.
“I wasn’t drinking that night,” O’Leary said. But that apparently doesn’t matter. “I was told each picture was equal to a two-game suspension,” he said.
Oh, well that makes sense then. Wait, no, no it doesn’t. In fact, this is beyond ludicrous. The fact that few people are standing up for the students baffles me even more. Even the ACLU won’t come to their defense! How is this the school’s business? Underage drinking has absolutely nothing to do with school and instead should be left to the individual kid’s parents to decide how to deal with the photos. At best, the school officials should have notified the parents and left it at that.
Furthermore, how does the school know the kids were drinking? Who are they to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that water wasn’t in the beer cans. I had a friend who used to walk around drinking coke at parties while pretending to be getting drunk on mixed drinks. High school is full of peer pressure and kids will do anything to “fit in,” even if that means making it look like they’re drinking at a party and getting drunk. Were these idiots in the school administration office ever in high school or were they simply hatched from an egg as stuck up twats? Because frankly they’re acting like morons here. Call the parents, tell the kids if they’re caught drinking on school grounds that they’ll be suspended, and move on.
If this had been a message board where the kids plotted to create a cheating ring or talked about beating up another student on school grounds, then I could easily see the administrators stepping in. But these were photos taken at an off campus party, some of which were taken over two years ago, where an off campus violation occurred. God help the students at Eden Prairie if their deans find any photos of their messy rooms at home or of them getting a speeding ticket! Who cares if neither of those have anything to do with school?!
To make this story even better, many of the students are protesting the suspensions and are even organizing the protest on Facebook. God, I love irony!
Ok. So whoever wrote this article is an idiot. Pure and Simple. You cant really expect anyone to think that it is ok for kids who are underage to be drinking, even though it is at an off campus party. Also, it isnt 100 kids who were punished, it was 13. Your facts are completely wrong. I go to EPHS, and even though im not a pathetic Drunk like these partiers are, I still know that my schools administration does not go on to a social networking sight like Facebook looking for something to punish their students for! Do you think that our administration wanted to punish their students and make the school look bad??? Of course not. But they had to. Its the law. And no, they did not overstep their boundaries. Every student signed a handbook saying they wouldnt drink or consume any other illegal substances. If a student is in sports, they have to sign a contract saying that they wont drink, smoke, or do drugs, not during the season, or even during that year. For you to say that anyone has overstepped their boundaries is ludicrous. The pictures were presented to the administration by a concerned parent, not wanting their child, or anyone else’s for that matter to be killed by alcohol poisoning! Your article is nothing but a bunch of lies and embellishments. And in response to your comment on how “you cant prove they were drinking” i say: “OH PLEASE.” You cant honestly think that these students, holding alcoholic beverages, at parties, were not drinking??? Your even more of an idiot than I thought. Of course these kids deserve their suspensions. In fact, I do not believe their punishment was severe enough. Underage drinking is one of the worst things a teen can do; it harms you as well as those around you, and as you can see, it creates trouble. So, in conclusion, the school officials did not overreach their boundaries. Is it wrong to punish students for doing something illegal??? No, of course not.
I also go to EPHS and John is correct. Every one of those students signed a legal contract saying they would not drink. Each of those students knew the punishment if they were caught drinking was suspension from their sports. Also by the way, probable cause is enough to suspend them, there doesn’t need to be a staff member who saw them drinking. As everybody knows, the internet is not private. Hence the prefix inter, and the root net which comes from network. Therefore internet means it inter connects networks. If you post somethig OTHER PEOPLE CAN AND WILL SEE IT!!!!!!!! If you don’t want something to be seen, don’t put it on the internet. Also, Facebook has an option to block people from seeing photos. Because none of these precautionary measures were taken, the photos were available to anyone in our school. So basically the students chose to sign a contract saying that they would not drink alchohol, they chose to drink alchohol, and they chose to put the evidence on the internet for anyone to find. Conclusion, those 13 people were stupid and illegal.
Whoever you are who wrote this letter… I’m sorry, but you are a total and complete idiot who is ignorant of what really happens at EPHS… Well if you insist on siding with these drunks, then you are as bad and pathetic as them.
this is of course in response to the article writer, not the previous comment writer. i agree with him. hes not stupid.
Ok, like John said, the “fact” that 100+ students have been suspended is just a false rumor. I go to EPHS and I know that only 10+ people got suspended from sports/extracurricular activities (violating an agreement to abstain from chemicals upon sign-up) while (maybe) 100+ students were simply questioned; no one was suspended from school. The people who were punished deserved it because they not only violated an agreement within the public schools system, they also violated a state law. We don’t need any more reasons than those to justify the school’s actions.
Actually only 40 people were even questioned and only 13 suspended from sports, in the end you shouldn’t sign a contract if you don’t intend to follow it
But isn’t it the parents responsibility to reprimand their children if they’re drinking? Yes! Not HS Officials. Don’t HS officials have anything better to do? HS Officials already treat their students like their in prison, why do they need to snoop on Facebook or MySpace for anything to try to read the dirt on their kids? Again, that’s the parents responsibility. Do you honestly think all high schoolers who are in sports don’t drink? Really? Give me a break! It’s high school, Come on people! Let the kids have some fun!
And, this: Well if you insist on siding with these drunks, then you are as bad and pathetic as them written by John Moen …………. So, John… you’re saying every one out there that drinks is bad and pathetic? You’re telling me you didn’t drink while in high school? By the way it sounds, you probably didn’t… I can just tell what kind of personality you have by the way you are writing. A holy roller who god forbid has a drink 1x a year. Go figure!
I agree with the writer of this article 150%, most definitely. What’s under the kids profile is his business. Who gave any high school official the right to search everyone and get them in trouble for it if it wasn’t on school property? Invasion of Privacy? Most definitely. Should the kid have made his profile private and not available to the public? Yes! But that doesn’t mean he should receive the punishment he is receiving.
So, if this is the case…… 3/4 of the high schools out there will not have a sports team if this all continues the way the high school officials are letting it. That’s for sure! Let the kids have a life, who cares if they’re in sports. If the parents want to punish them, let them… other wise HS officials should stay out of it! End story.
The Following is a response to the previous posters comment:
Quote “u can just tell what kind of personality you have by the way you are writing. A holy roller who god forbid has a drink 1X a year. go figure!”
actually lady you would be correct in saying that john, Dan, Noah, or myself for that matter only has 1 or fewer drinks a year, and as high school students we are very proud of that. All of us and all of the 4000 kids at EPHS signed a contract saying that if we were caught drinking or using any illegal substances, on OR OFF school property, there would be onsequences. As of this moment us four and all the other 4000 students of EPHS are under this contract, and you know what, we’re honoring it. when you wrote your comment you mistakenly assumed what most adults assume about high school kids, that they all go out partying and drinking and that they only sometimes get caught. Well I hope that the rest of the students at EPHS don’t see your comment, because they will be offended. the fact of the matter is most of us DON’T Drink at or outside of EPHS because we know and respect the rules that the school authorities have set. in fact most of us at EPHS like how the authorities handled this case of idiots doing idiot things.
It is true that very few students did protest the decision, but contrary to what you may have heard from the news, hundreds of people didn’t walk out of school, only 15 actually had the courage to walk through an open door unhindered. Students did gather in large crowds to watch the few protesters, not to support them by chanting “Walk,Walk,Walk” but to boo the protesters for what the majority of students see as going too far.
And no, the “opressive teachers” at EPHS didn’t forbid talk about the suspensions or the walkout, the principal came over the PA to announce to the school what the facts of the matter were. we students even spent hours discussing the situation in class with teachers. And no, the Teachers did not try to prevent the walkout from happening, they over saw the small group of protesters as they demonstrated for a foolish cause, but allowed them to exit the building un-punished if they had the courage to. the teachers even said they would have supported the protesters if they had actually been protesting for a better cause.
The fact of the matter is this, the school officials were perfectly justified in doing what they did for obvious reasons stated before, and the vast majority of EPHS students agree. Who are you to criticize the actions of a school which you don’t go to, who are you to claim that this happens to a majority of students, who are you to cry foul when the teachers, parents, and students of the high school say otherwise?
This was clearly an invasion of the privacy of EPHS students’ personal lives. It’s a damn shame that we live in a world where students are under the constant supervision of adults: not allowed to just be kids without learning by themselves the REAL consequences of their actions. Getting suspended from school was a horrible punishment to begin with because it doesn’t teach the teenagers anything. I personally see no problem with teenagers drinking as long as they’ve been taught how to drink in moderation and to watch out for others to make sure nothing bad happens. It’s also a shame that whoever sent in the pictures (whether it be a teacher or a student) didn’t just mind his or her own business. I doubt that the actions of the students in these pictures affected any student or teacher in any way, shape or form. I applaud the students who decided to walk out, and I hope that these ludicrous, frivolous suspensions are revoked on the grounds of invasion of privacy. It is not the job nor the right of any school district to dictate the after-school activities of its students. In this case, it should be left up to the parents to decide what should be done about THEIR children, NOT the school or the district.
Ok both of you should get your facts straight. First of all nobody was suspended from school. The 13 students signed a contract saying that they knew that they would recieve a 2 week suspension from their sport if they were caught drinking alcohol by the school. These students AGREED to a two week suspension. Also, nobody went “snooping around” for pictures, these pictures were preseted to the school and the school did what it was obligated to do. The internet is a public place, anybody can use it so anybody can come across what you post. Also, you said that it is ok to teach children that ii’s acceptable to drink in moderation. Are you saying we should teach children tobreak contracts? In my opinion, it’s better for the students to get a small suspension from their sport than to lose a job later in life because tey don’t know what a contract means. Those 13 people had a CHOICE to sign the contract, they had a CHOICE to drink alcohol, and they had a CHOICE to practically give the evidence to the school. Also regarding the walk out, I know some of those people, they did it just for the hell of walking out, they didn’t give a damn about the suspension. Frankly the people who actually support those 13 students who got caught are drunkards themselves.
Also, I don’t really have that much of a problem with underage drinking, it happens I know, I just don’t like peole bitching because they messed up and got caught. Just accept the consequence that you agreed to and shut up.
It’s been almost two weeks, folks. You can stop caring about this and move on now, kthxbye.