More on the ACLU-Desoto County Lawsuit
I recently commented on the lawsuit brought by the ACLU against Desoto County Schools after a student was expelled when gang related pictures were found on his cell phone. Justice News Flash has some more information on the case:
The Southaven Middle School student, Richard Wade, who was 12-years-old at the time, had his phone taken away after he read a text message in class, which was from his dad. The cell phone was sent searched by his football coaches, the class principal, and a police sergeant, who found pictures of what they call “gang-related activities”. The lawsuit claims, the “gang-related activities” is actually Wade dancing in his bathroom of his home, and his friend who was also at Wade’s home, holding a BB gun across his chest.
Here is what Desoto county said:
Southaven Middle School bans the use of cellular phones by students, and gives the authority to teachers and coaches to confiscate them and turn them into the main office, where parents have to pay a fine in order to retrieve them. In a statement released by school officials, they stated “School system officials earlier cited the district’s policy on the use of cell phones during school hours and said students know that if they break the rules, their cell phone will be confiscated and that school officials reserve the right to look through the cell phone to see if they were cheating on a test or conducting illegal activities related to gangs and drugs.”
Imagine everything you’ve said “under your breath, whispered in your best friends ear” appropriate or not was permanently recorded, and suppose it was made available by people (in some cases without a lot of commonsense or judgement) that had significant power over you (teacher or principal). Suppose this imformation gets into your academic file at school and is used to make a judgement about who you are by colleges, scholarship committees, prospective employers, etc. I think you can see where I’m going with this. NONE of us could withstand this kind of scrutiny. All your private thoughts for everyone to see and make uniformed judgements about us. This is exactly what is taking place in this day and age with the cell phones taking the place of Private conversations in years past that would have been gone before the next breath. I don’t know all the particulars in this case but I suspect this child will forever be harmed by this unless he goes to work for the ACLU. All agree the phone should have been taken but to read the private information without good cause was over the line. Some schools fall back on a policy called imminent danger (which is open to interpretation) to justify locker searches and phone viewing. This is fine but it requires the person making that determination to have commonsense which I find lacking in todays school system. When people in power don’t display/use commonsense or judgement then rules have to be inacted for them to follow.