Student Suspended for Facebook Comment Criticizing College

College Life
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<p>"Marketing student Marc Bechtol learned from Catawba Valley Community College that what you say can come back to haunt you.</p>

<p>The school suspended Bechtol on Oct. 4 for two semesters and banned him from campus in response to a comment he made about the school on Facebook.</p>

<p>The incident started when Bechtol was forced to sign up with the college’s debit card service through Higher One bank in order to access his grant money. In the process of signing up, he was reportedly asked for personal information, such as his Social Security number and his date of birth.</p>

<p>Not long after he signed up, he allegedly began to receive unwelcome spam email from various credit card companies.</p>

<p>According to the website for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Bechtol wrote a post on the college’s Facebook page on Sept. 28 about the incident.</p>

<p>'Did anyone else get a bunch of credit card spam in their CVCC inbox today? So, did CVCC sell our names to banks, or did Higher One? I think we should register CVCC’s address with every porn site known to man. Anyone know any good viruses to send them?' it read.</p>

<p>'OK (sic), maybe that would be a slight overreaction,' Bechtol wrote under his own post moments later.</p>

<p>In response, the college sent a letter to Bechtol stating that, in light of his comments, he will receive a two-semester suspension and was prohibited from being on the school’s campus..."</p>

<p>Free speech for me but not for thee.</p>

<p>North</a> Carolina Student Suspended for Facebook Comment Criticizing College CBS Charlotte</p>

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<p>The internet makes administrators crazy. If a student had written something similar in a letter to the school newspaper, there would probably have been no consequences.</p>

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<p>The truth is, students are considered representatives of their college, and no college wants its students to run around talking bad about it. Just like companies are creating social media policies prohibiting employees from talking negatively about their employers - students shouldn’t speak that way about their schools.</p>

<p>Of course, students are also paying for college whereas employers are paying employees. Still, I wonder if he, as a student, had to sign or agree to any type of social media policy in his student handbook? If not, then I think he could fight the suspension. </p>

<p>Social media policies can only prohibit employees/students from saying negative things that are not /true./ He had no proof that the school sold his information - he only assumed that’s what happened and started spreading rumors. Employers and schools must protect their selves from incorrect, negative exposure. It is slander. </p>

<p>Now, if it was proven true, that would be a different story. Schools and employers can’t prohibit honest speech so long as it does not reveal any private company information.</p>

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<p>That seems incredibly stupid, it just gives the college a black eye in the community and maybe even reinforces the idea that they may be involved in selling the information of students. </p>

<p>It would be one thing if the student had written an article that had received a lot of media attention, but, without the overreaction of the school no one would have read his comment except for a small circle of his own friends. Really makes you wonder if any thought went into this decision at all.</p>

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<p>They also could have just deleted the message - anyone who has a fanpage can delete messages other people write, just like a regular profile. </p>

<p>The best thing the student could have done was to go to some officials and question how his information was used - mainly going to the bank, since that is where the information was given, and the school likely had nothing to do with it.</p>

<p>Still, people tend not to think before posing things via the 'net.</p>

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<p>No one outside the immediate area would have even known if they hadn’t done this. It makes them look irrational.</p>

<p>Deleting the comment would have been the best course of action in my opinion.</p>

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<p>That seems incredibly stupid. What, you can’t criticize the administration now? If he had said it aloud, there is no way he would have been punished as harshly.</p>

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<p>^
yep
people bash schools every day verbally. but 2 of my classmates got expelled in high school for facebook notes they made…</p>

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<p>He wasn’t just criticizing them, he was (perhaps jokingly) calling for petty attacks.</p>

<p>Some schools are pretty high strung about that sort of thing.</p>

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<p>People talk bad about my school all the time via fb.</p>

<p>Sounds like the kid was just being facetious to me…any repercussions for a fb comment like that is harsh.</p>

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<p>Incredibly stupid and he has every right to fight this. He’s a student paying for school, not an employee getting paid. Also, I think it would be worse if he’d made a video and posted it all over the internet. The sad thing is, that the school’s the one bringing this to the world’s attention. Nobody but his friends would’ve known otherwise. They should’ve just deleted the comment, because if he’d said this verbally there would’ve been no repercussions. I’d say he could’ve even posted it in the school paper (Without the reference to porn of course) and as long as he was simply questioning it and why it happened it would’ve been fine.</p>