Highschool basketball players from Lincoln Nebraska have been suspended from their team over photos on the MySpace.com website that show them apparently drinking alcohol with accompanying references to getting ‘hammered’. Though the events took place off school property and out of school time, administrators believe they are justified because the underage athletes are to be held to a higher standard (of puritanism?).
A spokewoman for Lincoln Public Schools said:
“If we get information that there’s some things there that we may want to know about, certainly, we would go in and look, but we don’t intend to have someone monitoring it on a regular basis,”
This is thought to be the first instance of school punishment over acts found or information provided solely online. MySpace.com is hugely popular with the teenage crowd who use it to host blogs, chat to ‘friends’ with similar claimed interests and to post photos of ‘themselves’. The danger in MySpace is the ease of pinpointing the location and activities of users, the mistaken trust in others online and the opportunity for misuse of information. Limits to user-access of personal information is unusual.
In other news:
After news of the players’ suspensions got out at the school, a lot of students edited their Web pages or deleted them altogether.
KETV.com: 7 Lincoln Athletes Suspended Over Internet Photos
Popularity: 1% [?]
Alas, just another day at the ranch in a country where one of the most popular Presidents ever can be mercilessly hounded and, then, impeached for a private, consensual sex act – while a mean-spirited, incompetent and mendacious war-criminal skates to glory. See, kiddies, even you can grow up to be President someday … if you just quit drinking someday!