Cyberbullying isn’t just wrong in Vernon County, Wisconsin. After this week, electronic messages that annoy, offend or ridicule are now criminal. Yesterday, the county voted to approve the anti-cyberbullying ordinance that was approved by the county board of supervisors last month.

The penalty is fairly stiff. If anyone is found guilty of violating the ordinance, they could be fined up to $500 and sentenced to a maximum of 30 days in jail. With this move, Vernon is following the lead of other municipalities around the state that have put a similar rule on the books over the last several years.

According to the Student Press Law Center, the text of the new ordinance doesn’t specifically mention students, but according to the Vernon County Sheriff John Spears, they will be the law’s primary targets. He said making cyberbullying illegal in the county will go a long way to helping curb the practice. He added that it would also provide an effective tool in dealing with bullies.

However, not everyone was as optimistic that the rule would make a difference.

Justin Patchin, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, said that he was contacted by the county before the ordinance was passed to give input on it. Patchin said he’s skeptical of the effectiveness of Vernon County’s law as well as those passed elsewhere.

Patchin said that there do not seem to be any incidents where anyone was charged under the anti-bullying measure, which makes judging their effectiveness a difficult task. He thought, however, that Vernon’s measure and similar ones elsewhere weren’t likely to have much of an impact.

Wisconsin already has an anti-bullying measure on the books, though it doesn’t specifically single out harassment that happens over text messages and social media.

Two other state laws have been used in cases of cyberbullying, Patchin said. A 2010 school safety law requires school districts to draft their own policy involving bullying of any type, and the state’s Unlawful Use of Computerized Communication Systems law can be used in criminal cases of bullying through electronic devices. That law criminalizes only“a pattern of conduct composed of a series of acts over a period of time.”

Patchin explained that laws prohibiting cyberbullying were passed in 16 states, so to fill the gap, a number of smaller municipalities drafted measures prohibiting it on their own. Patchin himself believes that criminalizing this kind of conduct is going too far, and the best approach to stop this kind of harassment is to address it informally and on an individual basis.

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Presidential elections, especially closely-fought ones, sometimes bring out the worst in the country’s citizens. That seemed to have been the case this November, when, after the reelection of President Barack Obama, more than a few young people took to Twitter to air their frustration with the choices made by the voters.

In response, Gawker media website Jezebel collected the most racially insensitive tweets of the bunch, directed mainly at President Obama, and published them – including the real names of their authors, who were mainly high school students – for their readers to see and judge. According to Ken Paulson, writing for USA Today, the collection proved a sorry one full of racist epithets, stereotypes and “with N-word in abundance.”

In some cases, Jezebel bloggers even contacted the students’ schools to seek comment from administrators about the tweets.

Although the the list no doubt garnered Jezebel many pageviews, what it didn’t garner them was many friends. Technology news website GigaOM even asked if what Jezebel was doing crossed the line into cyberbullying. When does this kind of denunciation of sentiments expressed by fairly young adults go too far?

The answer to that is never. It would be a mistake to mischaracterize the denunciation of racially offensive speech as abusive. To the contrary, that give-and-take (or more precisely “say something deeply offensive and get verbally pummeled”) is what free speech in America is all about. That’s the flaw in virtually every strategy to keep students in both high school and college on the social media straight and narrow. High school is all about preparing the next generation for citizenship. We teach them civics, history, a smattering of math and science and hand them a diploma. But we too often also try to control their every move. That’s literally the case with the news last week that a sophomore at John Jay High School in San Antonio was expelledafter refusing to carry an ID with a computer chip designed to track the movements of every student in the school.

Although Paulson mischaracterizes the story in question – the student refused to wear both RFID-fitted ID card and the one that with the tracking technology removed, offered as a compromise – he insists that schools have been treading a little too heavily on the free expression rights of their students all while attempting to shield them. The Supreme Court has previously found that even when in a school building, neither students nor teachers can be lawfully deprived of their First Amendment rights.

Some feel that by going overboard protecting students from the consequence of their speech, schools are robbing them of the opportunity to learn how to take advantage of these rights responsibly. Learning about both the freedom and the responsibility that comes from exercising your free speech is one of the main steps to becoming a full participant in U.S. democracy – something that schools shouldn’t be taking steps to actively discourage.

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Last year’s “Free to Tweet” campaign could be judged a success by any measure — over 17,000 tweets, including some from celebrities and even the White House, celebrated and commemorated the freedoms offered by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This time around, organizers are hoping to draw even more participants as they announce this year’s “Free to Tweet” contest which kicks off on the first day of December and lasts the entire 15 days of the online First Amendment festival.

The contest will be open to students in high school and beyond – and those 14 years of age and older – who can tweet their thoughts on the First Amendment protections offered in the United States. Appending the hash tag #FreeToTweet will enter their submissions into the “Free to Tweet” scholarship contest and make them eligible to win $5,000 in academic scholarships.

The competition will run between the midnight of December 1st and 11:59pm of December 15th.

The initiative is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and organized by 1 for All, an educational and public service campaign that builds understanding of the First Amendment and its five distinct freedoms: speech, press, religion, assembly and petition. Founding partners in the 1 for All campaign include the First Amendment Center, Newseum, American Society of News Editors and the McCormick Foundation.

The contest and the surrounding celebrations will all be leading up to December 15th’s Bill of Rights Day, first proclaimed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in November of 1941. Roosevelt called a national holiday to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the adoption of the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, but the historic anniversary was put on hold when just days after the proclamation America entered World War II after Pearl Harbor was bombed by Japanese planes.

Students can enter the scholarship competition by tweeting a message of support – using the hashtag #FreeToTweet – for the First Amendment. A panel of educators and First Amendment experts will review the entries and award five $5,000 scholarships. Judging criteria and complete rules can be found at FreeToTweet.org. Updates on the event can be followed on Twitter at @FreeToTweet2012.

The organizers hope that that they can beat last year’s record of 17,000 tweets in only one day. Among those expressing support for the First Amendment by tweeting about it in 2011 were Blake Shelton, Brad Paisley, Wynonna Judd and many others.

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Schools are walking a fine line between not restricting their students’ First Amendment rights and attempting to curb what some perceive as abusive cyberbullying of faculty members. The Wall Street Journal reports that North Carolina has taken the next step beyond occasional, piecemeal discipline by making internet postings that are deemed to “intimidate or torment” teachers a crime. Those found guilty of breaking the new law could face fines as high as $1,000 per incident.

There’s a long legal tradition of giving schools wide latitude in regulating student behavior while they are on school grounds, but how monitoring speech that takes place off campus — and especially over the internet — conflicts with the kids’ freedom of speech and expression hasn’t been thoroughly tested. North Carolina lawmakers might feel like they have no choice but to cast the net beyond the building walls, since the teachers have begun to feel the impact of harassment that takes place entirely on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Postings aren’t the only thing curtailed, however. The law also makes it a crime to impersonate someone with an intent to harass or torment.

Critics, however, argue the law risks trampling on mere venting and other less inflammatory forms of expression.

“Our concern is that we don’t throw the First Amendment out the window in our haste to get the kid who is calling the principal bad names on Facebook,” said Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va., a national group that advocates for students’ free-speech rights.

It is unclear how the exception to free speech protection for students set out by Supreme Court’s 1969 Tinker v. Des Moines decision — which allowed administrators to restrict speech as long as it was creating a disruption to the learning environment — might extend to the internet. Two recent decisions by the Third U.S. Court of Appeals found that punishing two separate students for creating fake social media profiles of their principals was unconstitutional since both students created the content offline and were clearly parodies.

Yet in a separate case in Connecticut last year, the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found administrators were within the law when they disciplined Avery Doninger, a high-school student, for posting a message to her blog encouraging people to call school officials a profanity in order to protest the school’s “jamfest” being canceled.

The court justified the punishment by saying that it created a substantial disturbance to the learning environment — the exception set out by Tinker v. Des Moines. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court, who will most likely prove to be the final arbiter on this issue, has not yet granted a writ of certiorari for any of the above three cases, nor the fourth one dealing with students-to-student internet harassment.

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However, lawyers on both sides were disappointed. Instead of any resolute decision being made, next year the high court will again be asked to wade into the issue, writes the Associated Press.

Francisco Negron, general counsel of the National School Boards Association, said:

“We’ve missed an opportunity to really clarify for school districts what their responsibility and authority is.

“This is one of those cases where the law is simply lagging behind the times.”

Witold Walczak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, believes that the Supreme Court should examine the question “sooner rather than later.”

“When kids go to school, the parents give up control. But once the kids leave the school, the parents again are the primary custodians, and have decision-making authority over those kids.”

The 1969 Supreme Court precedent holds that student expression may not be suppressed unless school officials reasonably conclude that it would “materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school,” writes David Kravets at Wired.

One of the cases discussed began in 2005, whereby a student created a parody that said his principal smoked marijuana and kept beer behind his desk. The student was suspended by the school, but the suspension was overturned by a district judge and upheld by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.

In another Pennsylvania case, an eighth-grader in the Blue Mountain School District used her principal’s photograph to create a fake profile on MySpace, describing him as a pedophile and mentioning a sex act. The girl was suspended for 10 days but the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says that she can pursue damages and legal costs. 3rd Circuit majority wrote:

“Though disturbing, the record indicates that the profile was so outrageous that no one took its content seriously.”

In both cases, the circuit based their decision on the 1969 Supreme Court precedent.

Disparities like this are common across the nation, as school districts try out various ways of dealing with how the modern day problems of addressing online pranks, threats or cyberbullying.

Kevin McCoy, president of the West Virginia Family Foundation, believes that the high court’s ruling is a setback but not a blockade to those who oppose the policy.

“Does this make it a little more difficult for us? A little,” McCoy said.

“But it definitely does not close the door to any future challenge.”

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The Society of Editors was formed by a merger of the Guild of Editors and the Association of British Editors in April 1999. It aims to uphold the universal right to freedom of expression, the importance of the vitality of the news media in a democratic society and promotion of press and broadcasting freedom and the public’s right to know.

The comments came as the House of Lords prepared to debate the proposed legislation on Tuesday.

Clause 13 of the Bill – if passed – would give accused staff the right to full anonymity until they have been formally charged with an offense, as reported at Education News earlier this week.

It comes amid fears over a wave of false allegations of abuse or physical assault made by pupils and parents against teachers in recent years. A report last week by the Department for Education claimed that as many as half of claims were unfounded.

Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister, said:

“Every allegation of abuse must be taken seriously, but some children think they can make a false allegation without any thought to the consequences for the teacher concerned. When these allegations are later found to be malicious or unfounded, the damage is already done. It can have a devastating impact and ruin a teacher’s career and private life.”

However, in a letter to peers, the Society of Editors said that the measures would be a “gross inhibition on freedom of speech: it would set a very dangerous precedent as people could be convicted for telling the truth”.

Bob Satchwell, executive director, said:

“It will be a criminal offence for anyone – pupil, parent, police, school, local authority, whistle blower, media – even to inform parents or public that an identified teacher has admitted that the allegation is true and has resigned, or been disciplined, or even cautioned for the offence… It would also be an offence to report that the identified teacher had been exonerated.”

The letter urged peers to support amendments tabled by Lord Phillips of Sudbury that would modify the Government’s plans to “avoid setting dangerous precedents”. Mr Satchwell insisted that malicious allegations by pupils were rare and the laws of libel, contempt and confidence already restricted their repetition and publication, writes Paton.

He added:

“As it stands the Bill could mean that an accused teacher might move from one school to another without allegations being properly recorded and aired if there is not a criminal charge… We urge you to listen to your colleagues who have raised this matter and to join them in asking the Government to modify their plans to avoid setting dangerous precedents.”

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