A high school student in Canada was recently kicked out for school for cyber-bullying on the social network Facebook.com. The student had setup a group about high schools vice-principle, where students posted derogatory comments about the vice-principle.
The Globe.com, reported 5 students, including the creator of the group Brad Parsons, where each suspended. Brad Parsons has yet to hear from the school what his punishment would be, but the other 4 students each received suspensions ranging from 4 to 20 days.
The school has a zero-tolerance policy concerning cyber-bullying. Facebook does not allow these condone type of groups on their network. Due to the large network of Facebook though, they do not have the time to check every group. They expect their users to have good judgment when in these situations, and they do have a “report” link where users can reports situations of cyber-bullying, spam and others.
Facebook’s chief privacy officer Chris Kelly had this to say:
“We’ve made a decision as a host of this information to not allow those types of personal attacks, (and) we deter them by expecting accountability. But we also have terms of service that allow us to remove those from the site, and when those are reported, we do that.”
Other students started a rally in the days following the suspensions which turned violent. Four students were taken away by police officers. Charges from the students range from obstructing a peace officer and assault with a weapon. The students contend that this is a breach of their freedom of speech.
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