With this modern era of technology and social media raging on, what happens when schools push a little too much to punish what students say? I personally believe that schools should not be allowed to punish a students speech on social media because it's conditioning teenagers that being borderline stalked/ getting zero privacy is okay. We all know by now it's genuinely not. It's 2024 don't punish little Timmy because he said he didn't like school on Snapchat. While my words may seem like all jokes there's plenty of real world instances of this.
Let's begin with our first case of student's having their free speech infringed by their school. This is a case of how a cheerleader was punished for a message she said on Snapchat. Begin quote, “Using a curse word four times, the student expressed her dissatisfaction with ‘school,’ ‘softball,’ ‘cheer’ and ‘everything.’ “ [page 1 paragraph 2] This instance shows a school blowing an angry girl's words out of proportion. They punished her by suspending get from the team for the rest of the term. This was an unjust punishment for a short lived angry message.
We now come to our second case and closing notes. Case two is Tinker v. Des Moines. In this case “In Tinker, a school punished students for wearing black armbands as a silent protest against the Vietnam War. The school district claimed that it feared the protest would cause a disruption at school, but it could point to no concrete evidence that such a disruption would occur or ever had occurred as a result of similar protests. The Supreme Court held: "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression.” [Page 1 paragraph 2] They suspended students who were not disrupting the school environment which was outlined in the free speech act that students can technically protest as long as they're not disrupting the educational environment. The cases show school's will punish students for anything they don't agree with. This is why I believe schools should not punish students for their social media posts as it infringes on their right to express their opinions.
