A 17 year old girl in Pennsylvania was using her cell phone in school and it was taken away. The principal found on her cell phone inappropriate pictures of the girl who owned the phone and turned it in to the police. Now she is suing because she believes that her rights were violated.
There seems to be a growing epidemic of students taking or being in possession of inappropriate pictures. Recently I had a discussion with my 16-year-old son making him aware that if he was ever sent a naked picture of a minor, he could be charged for having possession of it. I am trying to put some scare in him.
This is becoming a very serious problem. Cell phones are becoming sources of entertainment and victimization of children. Now I had to think about this story I mentioned at the start. She is using her cell phone in school, which is clearly against the rules. I can totally understand it being taken away. What I am less sure about is the fact that the principal went through the cell phone.
Did he really have any right to do that? I am torn. A part of me thinks he really didn’t. The issue was that she was using her cell phone. Dealing with that issue was the right thing to do but I wonder if he went too far in looking through it. Then the other side of me thinks it was good that he did because now she was caught and perhaps this would keep her from taking these pictures and sending them out. I don’t know. It’s a hard call.
There can be a fine line between violating someone’s rights and doing the right thing. As a parent, I would have been thankful to find out that my daughter had these pictures in her cell phone. Yet on the other hand I would wonder why the principal felt it necessary to look through her phone.
A few months ago a new rule went into affect at my daughter’s middle school. Although the school district bans cell phones from school property, some schools in the district still allow students to bring them but they must be kept in their lockers. My daughter’s school decided that they would have the students turn their cell phones into their teachers and at the end of the day, they would get back them back.
When I picked up my daughter from school that day she was really upset. She said she could tell that someone had turned on her cell phone. She had handed it to her teacher and at the end of the day, saw there were smudge marks on the inside. She has a flip phone so the only way fingerprints could get on there is if someone flipped her phone open. Why else would you flip it open but to check things out?
She really felt like her privacy had been violated. I tended to agree with her. I suggested that the next time she turned her cell phone in, she would remove the battery. She has been doing that ever since.
Needless to say this story has me torn. However the main issue is that it seems to be a growing problem amongst teenagers. It really saddens me that so many are feeling a need to expose their bodies to the world. What do you think? Was this a violation of her rights?
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