The family of a student from suburban Chicago high school is considering legal action against the school after her son was suspended for something he wrote on his Facebook page.


Justin Bird, 16, sophomore at Oak Forest High School, used his Facebook page, for criticizing a teacher.

Oak Forest High School superintendent says the Facebook announcement interrupted the school day, so the student was suspended.

The suspension of bird has raised questions about whether school officials exceeded their authority.

A few keystrokes, mouse click and a new Facebook page, was born. And almost as, was suspended Justin Bird.

“I did this on this laptop in my room, sitting in my chair. I do not know how they can come to my house and suspend me for what I did in my spare time,” Bird said.

Bird admits that fans created a Facebook page in which he called a teacher in a derogatory name. About 50 people have become followers. And then Justin took it down. But the next day at school, was suspended for five days. His parents are now considering taking legal action against the school.

“I do not think this is the site of the school to enter our house and say … my child is suspended for something he did at home,” said Donna Bird, Justin’s mother.

High School District 228 Superintendent Bill Kendall says what Bird wrote was “disrespectful, inappropriate and lewd. Although it has been done in house, broke the school”.

However, the American Civil Liberties Union says that this case is part of a growing trend across the country.

In another instance, Katherine Evans was suspended from her school in Florida to write on a Facebook page that her teacher was “the worst teacher you’ve had.” Last week, a federal judge ruled that Evans could sue the principal.

Legal experts say that while students are not threatening a teacher, which are protected by the First Amendment, particularly at home.

“We need a kind of non-governmental agent in your way to school in households and correcting the behavior of school simply because they think somehow involved,” said Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the ACLU.

Legal experts say there is much uncharted territory in the world of social networks. It may be a while before the U.S. Supreme Court have a case, because much of the time, parents and students are so embarrassed that they accept the punishment and move on.

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Researchers at Ohio University has found that students who spend most of their time on Facebook, adding friends, chatting and “poking” others are more likely to perform poorly in exams.

Aryn Karpinski, one of the Ohio State education department researchers, was quoted in the Times of London as saying, “Our study shows people who spend more time on Facebook spend less time studying. Every generation has its distractions, but I think Facebook is a unique phenomenon.”


Ms. Karpinski will be presenting her findings this week at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

Researchers questioned 219 US undergraduates and graduates about their study practices and general internet use, as well as their specific use of Facebook.

They found that 65% of Facebook users accessed their account daily, usually checking it several times to see if they had received new messages. The amount of time spent on Facebook at each log-in varied from just a few minutes to more than an hour.

The Ohio report shows that students who used Facebook had a “significantly” lower grade point average – the marking system used in US universities – than those who did not use the site.

“It is the equivalent of the difference between getting an A and a B,” said Karpinski.

21-year-old Daisy Jones, an undergraduate in her final year at Loughborough University said, “I was in the library trying to write a 2,000-word essay when I realised my Facebook habit had got out of hand. I couldn’t resist going online. You do that, then someone’s photo catches your eye. Before you know it, a couple of minutes has turned into a couple of hours and you haven’t written a thing”.

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Universities are reviewing their plagiarism policies to clamp down on students who use Facebook to cheat. Plagiarism experts have warned universities and colleges to be aware of students copying from each other when discussing coursework on social networking sites.

Gill Rowell, from the consultancy Plagiarism Advice, said universities needed to rework their plagiarism policies with “internet working in mind” but insisted institutions were taking cheating seriously enough.


The warning comes after almost one in two Cambridge University students in a poll of 1,000 admitted to cheating in their studies.

Student newspaper, Varsity, found 49% of undergraduates who anonymously took part in their poll confessed to passing off other people’s work as their own.

Law students were the most likely to plagiarise, with 62% saying they had broken university rules. Some 82% of those who admitted to plagiarising said they had taken sentences from online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Just 5% of the students admitted they had been caught.

“It is a depressing set of statistics,” Robert Foley, a professor in Biological Anthropology at King’s College, Cambridge, said.

University plagiarism experts will discuss cheating with Universities UK, the umbrella group for vice-chancellors, on November 19.

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Ask any college student and they will tell you that they have a love-hate relationship with Facebook. They love how it lets them connect with friends all over the world but hates how it seemingly devours their time. However, the scale seems to tip more towards the hate side, as it is now responsible for landing more and more students in sticky situations with the school and the law.

Many teens say they know someone who has landed in trouble for a Facebook posting. Teachers and administrators, they say, are cruising Facebook looking for incriminating evidence. Todd from Paul VI Catholic received a “friend request” from someone he thought was a pretty new girl coming to the school. The guys were excited. “She never showed up,” Todd says. He thinks it was an administrator. “I don’t see it being a kid—that’d be the lamest prank ever.”

It’s possible that school administrators are creating fake profiles to search online for bad behavior, but some say they don’t bother. Parents and other students bring pictures to the school’s attention.

“The information is readily available without us having to go trolling for it,” says Michael Doran, principal of Rockville’s Wootton High.

Student officers also gave out color-coded bracelets based on the amount of personal information that kids posted on their profiles. Students who listed cell numbers got yellow bracelets; kids who gave out a home number, address, or work information got red.

“We followed one girl home from work and videotaped it, showing how easy it was for somebody to stalk you,” says guidance counselor Jennifer Taylor. “We got her permission and showed it in our assembly.”

To illustrate the ugliness of Wootton talk online, the student government pulled quotes and wall messages from students’ profiles and posted them without attribution around the building. Among the quotes:

Not Jewish, thank you very much.
I hate dumb people, especially blonds with a lot of acne.
I love getting high.
Rape is not a crime—it’s surprise sex.

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A Facebook group called “December 1″ posting terrifying invitations to students at Ramapo and Indian Hills high schools to engage in violence. Authorities confirmed the threat and started investigating.

“I think they’re going to find out who it is,” senior Jared Horowitz said. “This stuff is easy to trace and everything.”


That was the reverse 9-1-1 call that went out to parents at Ramapo and Indian Hills high schools this week. School officials said they sent out the warning after a mysterious Facebook group calling itself “December 1″ sent out terrifying invitations to students.

“It was an individual that was on the site that was trying to recruit people to be part of a group or organization that would enter the building on December 1 and there were violent threats,” said August Depreker, interim superintendent of the Ramapo School District.

Both the Bergen County prosecutor’s office and police are investigating, trying to determine the identity of the group’s administrator. The threat has some students scared.

Interim Superintendent August DePreker tells The Record of Bergen County that students who accepted the invitation wrote on the group page that they wanted no part of any violence.

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