A 17-year-old student faces expulsion by the Plainfield School District in Plainfield, Illinois as a result of blog posts he made on xanga.com which were critical of the school staff, alleging bullying and intimidation. The student has already been suspended for 10 days for the "inappropriate comments" and "threats" the school felt he had expressed on his blog. The posts were not made on school time or with school equipment.
On May 1, the student posted the following message that apparently initiated the suspension:
On May 2, the student continued his passionate rant, giving some background to the controversy:
Attorney Carl Buck, who feels the school authorities have overstepped their boundaries, says, "The district is going to take away the student's education for exercising his freedom of speech... I feel like they are trying to control his freedom of speech. ... He is saying, 'You can't bully people and we have a right to object and you can't throw people out of school for voicing their opinions.'"
Other students at the school posted messages of support in their own Xanga blogs. A blogger named Meghan wrote, "As Americans, we have the right to speak our mind." Another student, Heather, who found out about the possible expulsion through the local news, wrote that "first of all, Xanga is outside of school ... second of all ... there was no threat towards anyone on his posts."
In a related case in March 2006, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that an Alaska high school acted improperly by suspending a student for carrying a banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" across the street from the school.
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Student faces expulsion over blog post