Facebook? Or Fools-book? Folks say some stupid things

What is it about Facebook that causes smart, sane people to do insanely stupid things?

I mean, the millions involved in social networking ought to be savvy enough to know that there are no secrets in cyberspace - no matter what their privacy settings may say.

Surely they know that once they hit "send" there's no way to take anything back, either. Screen shots are forever.

Facebook users must know that after the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings, school authorities are obligated to take all threats of violence seriously.

Yet a quick trip around the Internet unearths a dizzying array of recent school suspensions and expulsions due to jaw-dropping acts of cyber-stupidity.

Students have used Facebook to do everything from bully classmates to threaten murder.

Here's a thought: If you wouldn't say something in front of your mother or a TSA agent, think twice before posting it on Facebook.

A Duluth newspaper reports that one Minnesota high school student was expelled from school last winter after posting a "hit list" on Facebook.

The AP reports that a Louisiana high school kid was booted out of school in the spring for snapping and posting an "inappropriate" bathroom picture of a classmate on Facebook.

In New Hampshire, a 13-year-old student was suspended for a week for blabbing to all her Facebook friends that she wished Osama bin Laden would kill her math teacher.

A Nashville high school basketball star was expelled in January 2010 after he got angry at his coaches and threatened on Facebook to "kill em all."

It isn't just teenagers who seem to lose their inhibitions when sitting at the computer. A Kansas nursing student was kicked out of a community college after posing for a picture with a human placenta and posting it on Facebook.

Memo to future health care professionals: When the rest of us go to the hospital and leave behind body parts, we'd prefer you not incorporate them into your Halloween costumes, give them to your dogs as chew toys or use photos of them on your Christmas cards.

Then, closer to home, came this: Michelle Edwards, a Hickory High School senior, got in hot water because of a dopey post she reportedly slapped on a friend's Facebook page last month. Upset over a grade on a group English project, especially the teacher's evaluation that the writing was "incoherent" in places, Edwards vented on Facebook.

"I say we shoot our English teacher in the face. But then again we might not be able to carry that out since we're incoherent," she wrote.

Did Ms. Edwards really intend to blast away at her English teacher? Undoubtedly not. Should the school take such a statement seriously? Yes, absolutely. To let it slide would be a huge blunder.

By all accounts, Edwards is a smart girl. A nice one, too. Unfortunately, she put in print something that might have elicited nothing but laughs if she'd said it in person to a group of her friends.

This serious lapse in judgment deserved disciplinary action. Teachers ought to be able to grade papers without worrying about threats of violence.

Fortunately - for this girl and for all fans of common sense - Chesapeake school officials decided last week to suspend rather than expel Edwards, according to her father. He told The Pilot that she'll be taught at home for 90 days before she can return to the classroom.

Sounds about right.

This punishment demonstrates that administrators are taking violent messages seriously, yet they are not mindlessly following a "zero-tolerance" policy that results in automatic expulsions.

Speaking of minds, we all need to learn to use Facebook without collectively losing ours.

Kerry Dougherty, (757) 446-2306, kerry.dougherty@cox.net, PilotOnline.com/dougherty