Schools Should Focus On What Goes On AT SCHOOL

Too often school administrators will take action regarding events that happened outside of school (or school activities) using the extremely vague principle that such an event "impacts" the school environment.

I'll be blunt:  If Mean Girl 1 says something snippy about Delicate Flower 2 on Twitter over the weekend, the school has no reason to get involved absent some action at school on the part of MG1.  The law that allowed a Minnesota student to be convicted for online harassment has been declared overly broad and unconstitutional:

A Minnesota stalking law used to convict a high school student for insulting another teen on Twitter is overly broad and violates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee of free speech, the state Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday...

The case follows efforts by the federal government and U.S. states to prevent cyber bullying, which has been linked to depression in youths.

But a number of court decisions in the last three years have limited the powers of prosecutors to charge people for cyber bullying. For instance, the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2016 overturned the cyber-bullying conviction of a man stemming from his online activity as a high school student. The court ruled the statute violated the First Amendment.

Disclaimer for those idiots who cannot see any nuance: I don't support what the student in question did, far from it. The particular law under which that student was convicted was unjust.  It's not the school's place to punish even execrable behavior unless that behavior occurred at school.  The legislature needs to do a better job writing laws.