The stage looks like this.

Connecticut teacher (Jeffrey Spanierman) creates MySpace page to communicate with students. Conversations starts getting a bit too chummy, some professional boundaries are crossed, a subset of students get uncomfortable and the teacher ends up with a pink slip. The courts recently upheld that the school had the right to do this, and that “freedom of speech” was not a valid protection in cases where a teacher’s speech are disrupting a student’s ability to learn.

To be fair, the teacher was asked by the administration to pull the page after a faculty member became uncomfortable with it, he complied with the request but later replaced the profile with one the administration did not know about. It was only at this point when he was asked not to return. The question remains, in a world where everyone can communicate more or less as equals, where should the lines be drawn?

Here’s what the judge had to say (via MediaShift),

In the court’s view, it was not unreasonable for the Defendants to find that the Plaintiff’s conduct on MySpace was disruptive to school activities. The above examples of the online exchanges the Plaintiff had with students show a potentially unprofessional rapport with students, and the court can see how a school’s administration would disapprove of, and find disruptive, a teacher’s discussion with a student about “getting any” (presumably sex), or a threat made to a student (albeit a facetious one) about detention.

Moreover, there is evidence of complaints about the Plaintiff’s MySpace activities. For example, in her affidavit, Ford states that Emmett O’Brien students informed her of the Plaintiff’s MySpace conduct, which made some of them “uncomfortable.”…It is reasonable for the Defendants to expect the Plaintiff, a teacher with supervisory authority over students, to maintain a professional, respectful association with those students. This does not mean that the Plaintiff could not be friendly or humorous; however, upon review of the record, it appears that the Plaintiff would communicate with students as if he were their peer, not their teacher. Such conduct could very well disrupt the learning atmosphere of a school, which sufficiently outweighs the value of Plaintiff’s MySpace speech.

In short, a teacher can have a close relationship with his students, but as soon as that teacher moves from being a professional to a peer they are treading on dangerous ground — even if that move is on a site like MySpace.

What’s the moral of this story?

If you are a professional on the web, you will be held responsible for everything you say (just like the real world), and sometimes that responsibility extends into your day job (just like the real world). I am sure Jeffery saw no problems sending a few MySpace messages back and forth off the clock, but
he ran into trouble when he forgot his boundaries.

Take a look at the court’s opinion in full.

(Thanks Simon)