By TERRY WEBSTER

STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Sunday, December 4, 2004

Teen Web logs -- diaries kept online where anyone can see them -- are creating a disciplinary predicament for school administrators in Tarrant County and across the nation, education and legal experts say.

Principals have intervened when unkind words posted on the Internet caused confrontations between students at school, and some students are being disciplined for what they write online outside of their school activities.

A Birdville High School cheerleader was kicked off the freshman squad last month for having vulgar language in a Web log, or blog, she maintains on her home computer.

Grapevine-Colleyville school district officials said a student was removed from an extracurricular activity this year because of the student's online comments.

And last spring, a Martin High School cheerleader in Arlington was taken off the squad for something she wrote in a blog, district officials confirmed.

The punishment of bloggers pits school officials' desire to enforce their codes of conduct against students' constitutional rights, and courts are struggling to settle the issue.

"The problem here is the First Amendment, which prevents any governmental entity from regulating or punishing you in any way for your free speech," said Frank Colosi, an attorney for the Fort Worth ACLU.

Unless students' free speech is disruptive to the classroom, they can't be punished for it, he said.

Courts have disagreed on how much leverage school districts have over what students write on the Internet, said Tom Clarke, a San Francisco lawyer who handles First Amendment issues.

"A lot of courts distinguish first off whether postings on the Internet were made in a school facility," Clarke said.

Courts have been fairly consistent in ruling that schools can discipline students for what they write using school computers, he said.

But they have split on Internet postings that were created at home.

"Some courts have said that if it's at home, the school can't do anything about it," he said.

Many schools investigate student blogs only after someone complains, area school officials said.

That's what happened in the Birdville High School cheerleader's case.

The student asked that her name not be used, because of rumors at school about why she was removed from the squad.

"There are like 40 different stories out there," she said during a recent interview.

The problem started Nov. 12 when several friends were at the cheerleader's house.

One of the students went onto the cheerleader's Xanga.com blog and wrote a disparaging comment about the cheerleader as a joke, the girl said.

She said she found the comment the next day and wrote back, "Thanks, I love y'all."

Her response was intended as sarcasm, she said.

Someone anonymously printed out the cheerleader's blog and placed the papers in a school office mailbox, Birdville officials said.

A cheerleading coach viewed the student's response as an endorsement of vulgar language, school officials said, and removed her from the cheerleading squad Nov. 16.

School officials said the language violates a clause in the conduct code for cheerleaders. A portion of the agreement for cheerleaders says they are expected to "exhibit high moral standards."

Officials also said the student who maintains the blog should have removed the comments.

"People have free speech, but that doesn't mean that there couldn't be consequences for that," Birdville spokesman Mark Thomas said.

The cheerleader's mother, Kristin Larson of North Richland Hills, is trying to get her daughter back on the squad.

"My thinking is that the punishment doesn't fit the crime," said Larson.

Larson met Thursday with school officials, who stood firm on their decision to remove her daughter from the squad. She said she will continue to appeal the decision.

Further appeals can be made to the director of fine arts, an associate superintendent, and finally to the school board. The process could take weeks to complete.

Other area school officials who have weighed in on the issue say that students in extracurricular activities are considered leaders in their schools and that they should be held to strict standards.

"Participation in these activities is a privilege, not a right," said Julie Thannum, spokeswoman for the Carroll school district. "The code of conduct is specific about what happens for misconduct regardless of time or location.

"Certainly a blog situation with inappropriate content -- especially if it says inappropriate things about a teacher or a student -- could be considered misconduct, given the right circumstances."

Often, schools enforce conduct codes if administrators feel a school's reputation is compromised.

"Schools are trying to impose more socially respectable standards on students," said Frank Kemerer, a regents professor of education law at the University of North Texas in Denton. "Schools are trying to assert more control into socializing students.

"Counter to that is what students are used to seeing in the media and on Web sites, and there is free-spirited access to it."

But schools should use caution in enforcing conduct codes, he said.

"What students do at home on their own computers is generally beyond the control of the school, given that the scope of student free speech rights is broadest off campus," Kemerer said.

Students cannot be required to give up their constitutional rights as a condition of belonging to a school group or team, Colosi said.

"You cannot say, for example, 'I will give up my right to vote in order to be a cheerleader,'" Colosi said.

Birdville and Keller school officials say that in several instances, students' hurtful remarks on the Internet spilled over into school.

Keller is trying to address such situations before they become problems.

Several Keller administrators are monitoring blog sites to look for comments that could cause conflicts in school, said Mark Smith, executive director of secondary administration. He was not aware of any students who were removed from extracurricular groups because of what they posted on the Internet.

"We really can't discipline students for something that didn't happen at school," Smith said. "That's kind of like disciplining them for not cleaning their rooms."

Such decisions should be carefully weighed, some legal authorities said.

"It's a big, massive punishment to the students, and the schools know that it is," Colosi said. "They are trying to teach a lesson, when they need to learn the lesson that free speech is free speech."

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