WEEK 12 TAKEAWAYS 

We spent this week discussing a student’s privacy rights as they relate to free speech rights on high school and college campuses. 

In current events, Professor Dryer informed us that although the controversy between the Department of Justice and Apple concerning access to the San Bernardino shooter's Iphone has been resolved, there are still over one-hundred pending cases where prosecuting agencies are seeking court orders that compel Apple to create "backdoors" in Iphones. 

We began the week by reviewing the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503. This case affirmed a student's First Amendment right  of Free Speech within a school. Tinker, however, also acknowledged that high school's and colleges may abridge student speech within certain parameters in order for the school to fulfill its educational mission. Following Tinker, courts have acknowledged that student speech on college campuses was much more protected than student speech on high school campuses. I was interested in Vik’s comments related to this distinction. Vik noted that high school students are compelled to attend high school, whereas adults voluntarily choose to attend college. Most of us seemed to agree that this distinction meant that more tolerance is required on college campuses to ensure they remain marketplaces of ideas.

I was interest in the distinction Professor Dryer highlighted between free speech rights and privacy rights. Although he mentioned these two concepts are of-times co-extensive, he suggested that within the context of student speech, there are both distinct  privacy implications and free speech implications. We discussed student speech mostly within the context of free speech, rather than privacy. When considering anonymous speech, it is interesting to consider what defenses a student could raise that are unrelated to free speech to stop a school from identifying anonymous speech.

At the end of class on Thursday, we discussed a hypothetical in which a white elementary school-aged child bullied an African-American girl via a school-provided Ipad to the point where she committed suicide. Professor Dryer asked us to apportion liability based on moral considerations between the white student, the African-American girl, the white student’s parents, the victim’s parents, the school, and other students who were aware of the bullying. I thought it was interesting that most of us were willing to apportion some “moral” liability to other students who were potentially aware of the bullying. While we did not have to time to discuss our rationales in detail, I would be interested to know why we think young, immature children have a moral duty to report bullying. I don’t disagree necessarily, but I think the rational underlying this decision is worth exploring.

Most of us had never heard of Yik-Yak until this week. While none of us have Yik-Yak accounts, at least half of Professor Dryer’s undergraduate students subscribe to the service. We learned that Yik-Yak is not nearly as anonymous as people may think because Yik Yak states in its terms of service that it may identify users in connection with supporting the legal process. What troubles me about Yik Yak is that the service accesses your phone’s data to use your contact list to further solicit the service. Yik Yak has become such a hot bed for cyber bullying and other nefarious content that Yik Yak has suspended the service to nearly 90% of US High Schools.