Snow-Day Shouting Shaming
posted by Frank Pasquale
Yet another YouTube shaming cycle is in progress. A student who called an administrator at home to complain about snow day policy got a witheringly angry message from the administrator’s wife . . . which the student promptly posted on YouTube. The WaPo breaks (and analyzes) the story:
A phone call to a Fairfax County public school administrator’s home last week about a snow day — or lack of one — has taken on a life of its own. Through the ubiquity of Facebook and YouTube, the call has become a rallying cry for students’ First Amendment rights, and it shows that the generation gap has become a technological chasm.
“How dare you call us at home! If you have a problem with going to school, you do not call somebody’s house and complain about it,” [the] minute-long message began. At one point, she uttered the phrase “snotty-nosed little brats,” and near the end, she said, “Get over it, kid, and go to school!”
The student defended himself by claiming that
[The] message was not intended to harass. He said that he tried unsuccessfully to contact [the administrator] at work and that he thought he had a basic right to petition a public official for more information about a decision that affected him and his classmates. He said he was exercising freedom of speech in posting a Facebook page. The differing interpretations of his actions probably stem from “a generation gap,” he said. “People in my generation view privacy differently. We are the cellphone generation. We are used to being reached at all times,” he said.
Though I’m usually on Dan’s side in terms of skepticism about online shaming, I think the privacy and petition issues here are mind-bendingly meta. I wouldn’t want a phone message of mine put up online. . . but on the other hand, it’s difficult to discuss the underlying issue of “was this an appropriate response to the student” without hearing the medley of scorn, rage, and exasperation in the caller’s voice. On the other hand, I would not have published the names of the administrator and the caller, as the WaPo did (and I certainly would not have disseminated their home phone number, as the student did). They have already have endured “dozens more calls,” and the caller has probably learned her lesson about not being so angry in phone messages.
January 23, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Posted in: Privacy (Gossip & Shaming)
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Responses (6)
James Grimmelmann - January 23, 2008 at 5:36 pm
The thing about such stories is that no one involved has behaved well. Indeed, the two transgressive phone calls are roughly comparable. The problem is that the lever of the online mob mentality creates a race to YouTube. Whoever posts their clip of the other behaving badly first wins because their story gets told while the others is putting its boots on. That race isn’t healthy.
John Armstrong - January 23, 2008 at 7:41 pm
The wife overreacted, but the student was way out of line in calling the administrator at home, and then in whining off to the world at large at how horribly unfair life is. I second the “snotty-nosed little brat” comment.
Lawrence Cunningham - January 23, 2008 at 9:21 pm
The You Tube link indicates that the entry has been removed by the user, a positive sign and good ending to the costly learning exercise.
Bong hits 4 Jesus - January 23, 2008 at 9:57 pm
The Internet seems to be fostering a race to the bottom in terms of etiquette and ethics. Does anyone doubt that the student’s view that (s)he’s “petitioning a public official” comes from the outlandish view of what the first amendment supposedly means online (see autoadmit)? And the YouTube response reminds me how as recently as 1998, people thought it was unethical to tape someone unawares (see Linda Tripp).
As for the idea that the snot nosed brat thought this was his/her 1st amendment right — good thing the Court put an end to that for high school students last term.
locksley - January 24, 2008 at 6:58 am
Calling an administrator at home seems not at all comparable to taking London and forcing King John into negotiations at Runnymede.
You may also recall some other trifling incidents in the history of the right to petition. Yet, it is certain that both the impertinent transgressor and the well-insulted sovereign had their heads cut off —and all questions well–buried— by the time of the Glorious Revolution and the Bill of Rights (1689).
Or is all that just too “outlandish” for you provincial yankees?
Brian Holland - January 24, 2008 at 1:23 pm
What strikes me is not the generational divide on propriety (calling an administrator at home, demanding an explanation, etc.), but rather the generational divide on technological realities and public/private concepts. The administrator listed his home telephone number and his wife voluntarily recorded a message on the student’s voicemail — both of which seem rather naive if you seeking to avoid contact or to rely on some ephemeral nature of oral communication. But where the generational divide is even more accute is in the act of taking the wife’s message to a “public” forum. Either she didn’t realize it could be done or didn’t believe it would/should be done. The student on the other hand likely believed that this was precisely the forum in which to air the dispute. That is what social network sites are for (or at least what they have become). That doesn’t make the wife’s message “private”, the student’s action “wrong” or the technology “bad”, it is simply outside the (self-defined) reality of many in the wife’s generation. Would we decry the student’s action if he was caught in the hall playing back the recorded message for friends? I would venture to guess that, in his mind, that is exactly what he was doing.
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