The Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a decision that a principal was not unlawfully retaliating against a student he temporarily held in the school’s detention room after reading his essay depicting recreational drug use, law-breaking and suicide.The case was brought by middle school student Raphael Cox’s parents, who alleged Principal John Kolesar infringed Raphael’s freedom of speech, in addition to the parents’ right to custody of Raphael, after Kolesar filed a report to child welfare authorities suggesting the parents were inadequately protecting their son.The essay that brought on the dispute was a response to an English class assignment asking what the student would do if he had 24 hours to live.
Author: Peter Velz
ACLU sues Missouri school district over Internet filtering
A school district in Missouri is the first in the country to face a lawsuit brought on by the American Civil Liberties Union’s “Don’t Filter Me!” campaign, an initiative designed to take one-sided Internet filtering to task.The ACLU filed a lawsuit Monday against the Camdenton R-III School District for its custom-built filtering software that blocks sites for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities while still allowing anti-LGBT sites.The filtering software the district uses employs the website database URL Blacklist, which includes viewpoint-neutral categories blocking sexually explicit sites in addition to a “sexuality” category that blocks sites with LGBT information, including sites that are not sexually explicit.The lawsuit was filed on behalf of four LGBT organizations that were blocked in the district: PFLAG National (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbian and Gays), the Matthew Shepard Foundation, Campus Pride, and DignityUSA.
N.C. State fires well-known journalism adviser
BradleyWilson, the coordinator of student media advising at North Carolina StateUniversity, was fired this month after holding the position since December2002.