McLaughlin: Bullying bill takes student activity monitoring too far - Iowa State Daily:... - 3 views
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Another big point is regarding the power the bill would give to the schools when it comes to dealing with bullying, especially cyberbullying. The bill allows for school officials to deal with bullying which happens outside of school, including what happens on the internet. This gives school officials the right to monitor kids’ social media and other electronics and punish them for how they use social media even when they are outside school.
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This is a really interesting and challenging legal issue. The article is an opinion piece on current anti-bullying legislation in Iowa. The author takes a position against the bills' position that schools have authority to discipline cyber-bullying issues outside of school hours. The author's position is that the bill violates students' first amendment rights. I would tend to agree, although anytime a teacher does set up a forum through facebook, twitter, or some other public sharing place, the school does have the responsibility to teach cyber-citizenship and monitor those forums created through or by the school. For example, if a classroom teacher has students create twitter accounts for class or a facebook group for a lesson, then the school has the responsibility to get involved. The lines do get blurred, though, and it is not a 'cut and dried' situation that one bill can adequately respond to on it's own.
