N.J. Students Ordered to Take Down Blogs

[Judi Lynn]

N.J. Students Ordered to Take Down Blogs

By WAYNE PARRY
Associated Press Writer

October 27, 2005, 9:18 AM EDT

NEWARK, N.J. -- A Roman Catholic high school has ordered its students to remove personal blogs from the Internet in the name of protecting them from cyberpredators.

Students at Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta appear to be heeding a directive from the principal, the Rev. Kieran McHugh, to remove personal postings about the school or themselves from Web sites like myspace.com or xanga.com, even if they were posted from the students' home computers.

Officials with the Diocese of Paterson say the directive is a matter of safety, not censorship. But constitutional experts say the case raises interesting questions about the intersection of free speech and voluntary agreements with private institutions.

"There was a student who thought he was talking to another teen, and that was not the case," said Marianna Thompson, a diocesan spokeswoman. "Young teens are not capable of consenting to certain things, especially when they're being led along by adults."
(snip/...)

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-catholic-school-internet,0,7647599.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

[Ian David]

1. And who knows more about protecting kids from predators... n/t

[LostinVA]

6. Come on -- the huge majority of the priesthood aren't pedophiles

Blame the hierarchy on allowing this to continue, not the individual priests. I'm no longer a Christian, but I was raised RC,a nd there are some wonderful religious in the Church.

[Ian David]

7. Sorry, I should have been more specific in my sarcastic finger-pointing

I don't blame Catholics or even priests.

I point squarely towards the top of their hierarchy where I lay blame.

[ComerPerro]

2. I'd like to see them enforce it

[BiggJawn]

3. More "Fur den Kinder" bullcrap...

We spend all this effort "protecting" our young'uns from all KINDS of boogiemen, some of them real, even, and then kick 'em out the door with no life skills when they turn 21.

No wonder some wind up alcoholics with $45,000 of credit card debt their junior year in college.....

[buddysmellgood]

13. Have you paid down the debt yet?

:evilgrin: :rofl:

[BiggJawn]

14. Sorry, Buddy....

I'm damn near 50 years old and didn't have to suffer under this "Golden Child" crappola our betters put their kids (and the rest of us)through these days.

Total amount of my debt is less than 20 kilobucks, BTW...

[buddysmellgood]

21. Good for you. I completely agree with you. I just had to play a little.

[BiggJawn]

24. Heh-Heh....

If I WASN'T an alky in my younger days, I would have filled in until a real one came along....

[MrModerate]

4. Recommend they take them down, as a matter of prudence . . .

Possibly a good idea.

ORDERING them? Stick it up yer ass, Ms. Spokesperson.

Please note that in their alternate reality "teens are not capable of consenting . . ."

Legally not allowed, perhaps, but not capable?

Pretty whacked out, IYAM.

[Wise Doubter]

5. "Why yes,....

just the other day Father Johnson was on the internet chatting with what he thought was this innocent, persuadable young adolescent, only to find out - at their secret scheduled meeting, that it was really Father Peterson." "This type embarrassing predatory behavior must be hidden - er, I mean forbidden."



THEY are advocating against child predators ??!! Gimme a break.


:wtf:

[fshrink]

8. Good.

We need a lively underground.

[cantstandbush]

9. The tyranny of the church is matched only by the tyranny of the Bush

administration.

[myrna minx]

10. This is McHugh11!!!!!!!1! I'm series!!!!1!!!!!!!1 n/t

Sorry-I couldn't help it. :o

[PatriotGames]

11. Myspace.com is a pedophile's paradise. n/t

[Mizmoon]

12. Their hearts are in the right place

but this is really the job of the parent.

[Boomer]

16. Absolutely

The church or school can certainly recommend certain guidelines to parents, but only the parents have the right to enforce those guidelines at home.

[Left Turn]

15. This is absurd

A school should not be able to regulate a students free expression off school grounds.

[Chovexani]

17. If it clears some idiot teenie fangirls off my LJ comms

I'm all for it. :P

There's so many awful Catholic jokes I could make about this, but for once I'm not gonna go there. ;)

[progressivebydesign]

18. As a parent I understand the point, but it should be handled differently.

As a parent of a high school freshman, I have painful experience with the whole underage Myspace debacles. If parents actually realized what their pre-teen and young teens are posting on those things, and how easy it is for predators to reach them, they'd faint dead away.

The sites are for 16 and older, and most of the kids I saw lied to get a site, then posted their real ages, their full names, their schools, photos, etc. Scary shit.

[NashVegas]

22. And It's Parent's Responsibility to Supervise, Not the School's to Dictate

First, as wrenching as it may have been, good for you!

The correct thing for the school to do would be notify parents of the kids' blogs and have them deal with any breaches.

To blanketly dictate to the kids to take them down, the school oversteps its bounds in both Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Association to any kid over the posted 16 age limit.

[RunningFromCongress]

19. I support this only b/c I loath MySpace

[WhiteTara]

20. 50,000 children a year are stolen in the U.S.

I know that number is an estimate, but worldwide the human theft is on the rise with estimates of 200,000 per year. There are huge rings of sexual enslavement and another in body parts. Children should have this protection at home given to them by their parents, but it is so hard to imagine that there are such terrible people on the earth that they would try and snatch your child through the internet. I don't think children should have unfettered access to the internet and chat rooms are death. :rant:

[Occulus]

26. Parents who leave their children unsupervised in front of a computer

ALLOW this to happen if it happens while the child is online. I'm sorry, there's NO EXCUSE UNDER THE SUN for allowing a child to use an internet-connected computer in an unsupervised manner.

That said, they didn't need to ban blogs. Not when they can filter them.

And honestly- it's not hard to sift through blog posts using keywords, so they would have easily been able to discern is the students were misusing the blogs, or being used by people on them.

This is NOT okay.

[kamtsa]

23. Anti competitive practice ...

... they try to block the out of church predators from
contacting the kids.

[Occulus]

25. This. This right here.

THIS is why I don't like private schools of any sort.

This. Right. Here.

They can, and do, trample upon the constitutional rights of their students, and the students come out of school thinking this is okay. They think this is okay because "they did it to me and it didn't harm me."

"Keep the kids safe" is NOT a good enough reason to summarily revoke the rights to free speech. I bet there were at least a couple students there over the age of 18, too, which would mean- if that's the case, as it usually is in a high school- they did it to voting-age adults, who may now think it's okay because "it doesn't do any harm".

[Nostradamus]

27. They're jealous because somebody else might want to bugger their pupils