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First Amendment Constraints of Public School Administrators to Regulate Off-campus Students' Speech in the Technology Age

In a world where students and teachers both rely on technology in the process of education, understanding the constraints of public school administrators to regulate off-campus student's speech is a vital issue. This dissertation focuses on ways to evaluate legal analysis of cases involved in off campus speech. The methodology of legal analysis is used to identify judicial reasoning concerning established legal principles pertaining to the constitutional right of public school students to freedom of expression, and the application of those principles to off-campus student expression delivered by electronic means. This research produces a number of key findings: Many lower court cases have favored with the students unless the school district could prove substantial disruption to the learning environment or a true threat existed due to the off campus speech. In addition, it is crucial for the districts to have concrete policies in place to educate the students about acceptable usage of technology. The main conclusions drawn from this research are that current approaches to punishing students for their offensive off campus speech does not uphold in the courts and administrators must be resilient to speech that may be unpleasant to them. This research also includes several recommendations for administrators such as guidelines on how to write their acceptable usage policy. It also provides a chart with a summary of critical cases of importance to administrators.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc271894
Date05 1900
CreatorsShahzad, Erum H.
ContributorsDietrich, Joseph, Jones, Greg, Brooks, John, Stromberg, Linda
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
FormatText
RightsPublic, Shahzad, Erum H., Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved.

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