Twitter Tweets = Suspension?

"Guess what?! I tweeted about my teacher last night.  Said some bad stuff, and now I'm suspended.  But I learned by lesson and won't do it ever again."

Join twitter to connect with people across the globe, but be careful with what you tweet!

Saying bad things about your teacher is one thing.  Saying bad things about your teacher online is a whole different story. The same meaningless words that were said just for the heck of it, and not for a real purpose, posted online can lead to serious punishments.  Khadijah learned this lesson up close and personal when she tweeted about her teacher in mid-November. Her post went something like this: 

"He lives at home with his mother, eats fish sticks for dinner, and all he talks about is Star Wars."

Unfortunately, this tweet was seen as inappropriate, and I agree.  Its not that the tweet was a lie, and made the teacher look like something he wasn't.  It was the fact that it was a comment about the teacher, and maybe he didn't want to make public.  The tweet makes the teacher look like a stereotypical single guy living his mother.  And hey, that may be the truth, but it isn't exactly the most appropriate message to be telling the whole wide world. Each person is untitled to their individual rights in terms of what they wish to keep private.  Maybe the teacher didn't feel the need to tell the whole world he was single. Let alone, have a student announce it for him. It's just inappropriate.

In my opinion, the school board enforced a reasonable punishment.  I mean you really got to think about it; they only got suspended.  It's not like they went to jail or had to pay a fine.  Nothing went on their permanent records, but for a school kid to get suspended it sends the same kind of message. The school board is trying to help the students realize their mistakes before things end up worse and impact their entire future.  The board is enforcing such a punishment, to let the students know that what they did was ultimately wrong, and it should not happen again.  Think about how the teacher's feels.  His personal life was just made public in less than 20 words.  The school board is just trying to tell the students that such comments and remarks, may seem "cool" at the moment, but they hurt feelings in the long run. Luckily, this post wasn't too harmful, but the ideology behind the punishment is to prevent more harmful posts.

I get it.  The students want to have the freedom to share their opinions freely. Because after all, we do live in a free country right? But freedom doesn't mean the right to abuse powers.  You are given the freedom to post comments.  There is no filter on the "Share" or "Tweet" button that will reject a comment you want to publicize because its 'mean'.  The things is, sharing your opinion should be respectful. Words aren't just words that come out of your mouth; five words can easily impact a person's feelings.  Yeah sure, we are allowed to share our opinions freely, but we got to remember that what we say has just a bad impact as what we do.  And when we post things on a social media website like Twitter, the words and feelings become public, and unfortunately a simple sorry, can't erase them, because they are permanently there, for the rest of eternity.

There's that saying you learn when your little, think before you act/speak.  Well social media and twitter can be applied to this principle, and asks you to think before you post.