Oct Prowler

PROWLER 17 Feature Call me old-fashioned, but I am a firm believer in The Constitution and the rights it provides. Specifically, I be- lieve “we the people” should have our freedom of speech. We should be able to express ourselves in the ways we see fit, even if that means students expressing their anger on social media. No one told me that this right was invali- dated when I started high school. No one warned me that the things I say in the privacy of my own home could be used against me by high school administration. No one told me that my typical anti-high school venting could come back and bite me. Students frequently post about how awful their AP Calculus homework is or how much they hate the latest book they’re reading in Honors English. These posts are just to be expected, but somehow the school system still manages to punish students for their comments. How can the school use something as simple as a tweet against me? Something said in fewer than 140 characters should not be consid- ered a problem. The fuss seems to be that insults published online can be a distraction to students and faculty; however, if people are distracted by one sentence long, grammatically incorrect twitter posts, then our priorities need to be reevaluated. Our priority should be education, not he said/she said drama. The school controls everything from what I can wear to when I can go to the bathroom, so why can’t social media be the one place of freedom? My social media should be exactly that, MY social me- dia, where I can express myself and my opinions freely, where I can say which classes I hate, where I can complain about my homework load, and where I can exercise my right to free speech. Schools and Social Media: Are Administrators Clicking Away Your Rights? Schools Should Not Intervene in Students’ Social Media Schools Should Intervene in Students’ Social Media By Hannah Matthews hmatthewsprowler@gmail. com By Lauren Young lyoungprowler@gmail.com Social media has taken over most people’s lives. Any small piece of downtime is filled with Snapchat, Twitter, and Ins- tagram. These outlets are a way to let people connect whether they live 20 minutes or 20 hours away, but it also leads to new ways of hurting people known as cyber bullying. Students who say vulgar and offensive things online are now being made to own up to what they say, and you know what? They should. Too many times have I seen horrible comments being thrown at people over the internet. Students think that just because they are behind a screen, it makes it okay to tear people down. It is never okay. Now it isn’t just student to student cyber bul- lying, it is student to teacher. Teachers are the new targets of online bullying. Yes I said it, bullying. There have already been problems at our school with stu- dents attacking teachers online and saying false and hurtful things about them. If a problem of that na- ture is brought to the attention of administrators, it is a punishable offense. Teachers are people too. That statement might seem redundant, but I feel as if we have forgotten that. My mother is a teacher, and if I saw a slanderous remark about her online, I would be crushed. Having the school get involved in these sorts of issues seems like the only way to stop them. Teens bullying each other online is still a huge topic, and it is an unfortunate problem that will prob- ably never go away. If students are held responsible for what they say, maybe that will make them think twice before making a useless nasty comment toward some- one. We as people do have a right to say what we feel, but we also have a moral obligation to make sure the things that we say are actually true and not just said in the heat of the moment. Letting the school punish those who bully their peers or superiors online will hopefully send a message to students to think before they tweet.

Oct Prowler

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