Posted on April 30, 2008 by thestateofblog
The Tennessee ACLU has demanded that the Memphis City Schools punish the principle of a middle school for posting the names of two homosexual high school students who are dating. They also demanded that the school district apologize to the students for the breach of privacy and prevent other principles from doing the same. The principle actually asked for the names of all couples, hetero and homo, to cut down on the bad behavior high school students are prone to getting into.
District officials would not say Tuesday whether any action had been taken against the principal, but in a written statement, MCS associate general counsel Van Turner said the district is investigating the matter and will submit a formal response to the ACLU.
Eyewitness News Everywhere requested a response from MCS. Van Davis Turner Jr., the associate general counsel for the Memphis City Schools Board of Education, released the following statement: “We take all allegations of invasion of privacy and discrimination seriously. At this time, we have not completed our internal investigation of this matter. Once we have completed our investigation, we will submit a formal response to the ACLU, directly addressing the issue. We look forward to working with the ACLU to amicably resolve this matter, if possible.”
Filed under: Schools, Sex
WTF?
Does this principal have nothing better to do than snoop on the students at his high school to find out who is doing whom and post it on a board in her office?
When did dating become bad behavior?
The taxpayers of Memphis pay this woman how much to spy on students. wow
The principal ought to be fired for the invasion of privacy.
If students are engaging in sexual conduct at school, the principal has a right to know and a responsibility to act - even if the kids are gay.
Kids dont have any got damn privacy, shit!
I’m tired of all this nonsense.
Plus, if he asked for the names of all couples, not just same sex ones, every body is equally invaded so there’s no problem!
That was me. Eloquent as ever . LOL.
Big J, I think you got it right!
J, if they are engaging in behavior that is against school rules just suspend them. Why put their names on a list?
It sounds gossipy to me.
Exactly how is the principal outing students when she created the list based upon suggestions from the staff? It would seem that in order to qualify for the list the students exhibited some kind of behavior suggesting they were dating and the teacher just reported and the principal posted it. I’m trying to see the problem with reporting what was seen.
Rod,
I agree that it’s gossipy. It wasn’t handled correctly, but I don’t think it was an invasion of privacy justifying the invasion of the communists, err, ACLU.
Collecting a list is one thing. Posting it for public purview is where they slipped up.
Big ups to VDT! Do your thing!
Stringer J: Rod
I agree that it’s gossipy. It wasn’t handled correctly, but I don’t think it was an invasion of privacy justifying the invasion of the communists, err, ACLU.
Roderick: Please explain to me what the end purpose of publishing the list was and so we can debate.
As I said before if their behavior was so bad then the school should have taken action against them and suspended them, but since they only made a list it makes me think that it was a petty ploy by a woman who has too much time on her hands.
And I now understand how it could have been used just to out the gay students since everyone who read the list would have focused on the same-sex couple to the exclusion of the straight ones.