It's now a crime for students to insult teachers!
North Carolina - After years spent trying to shield students from online bullying by their peers, schools are beginning to crack down on Internet postings that disparage teachers.
Schools elsewhere in the U.S. have punished the occasional tweeter who hurls an insult at a teacher, but North Carolina has taken it a step further, making it a crime for students to post statements via the Internet that "intimidate or torment" faculty. Students convicted under the law could be guilty of a misdemeanor and punished with fines of as much as $1,000 and/or probation.
The move is one of the most aggressive yet by states to police students' online activities. While officials have long had the ability to regulate student speech at school, the threat of cyberbullying teachers, which typically occurs off-campus, has prompted efforts to restrain students' use of the Internet on their own time.
School officials in North Carolina and elsewhere say the moves are necessary to protect teachers in an age when comments posted online—sometimes by students pretending to be the teachers they are mocking—can spread quickly and damage reputations.
The North Carolina law makes it a crime for a student to "build a fake profile or web site" with the "intent to intimidate or torment a school employee."
Critics, however, argue the law risks trampling on mere venting and other less inflammatory forms of expression.
"Our concern is that we don't throw the First Amendment out the window in our haste to get the kid who is calling the principal bad names on Facebook," said Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va., a national group that advocates for students' free-speech rights.
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