Facebook group causes suspensions

Two members of the student body recently made a group on the popular social network site, Facebook, possessing impolite statements directed towards one of the administrators, Marie Koch.
Disciplinary actions were taken upon these two students, who were suspended from school, causing hostile responses from the student body.  However, there is more to this blog incident than what is seen on the surface.
The group, called, “I Strongly Dislike Ms. Koch,” is surprisingly still up and running.  However, the membership shrank drastically from 300 members to 160 as soon as word of disciplinary action got out.
The group was intended to be called, “I Hate Ms. Koch,” but according to the creator of the group, who cannot be named due to reasons of confidentiality, did not use that title in fear of having his account deleted.  Many students were outraged by the consequences both members of the student body had to face without knowing the justified reason. 
“I don’t take it personally; everyone has a right to their opinion.  I know there are students that don’t necessarily appreciate what I have to do as an administrator.  The reason disciplinary action was taken was because it was affecting the instructional day.  It wasn’t because I was upset or anything,” Koch said.
The right to express opinion was in question; action was taken because the buzz over the blog was disturbing instructional periods.
Very little disciplinary action was taken against basic members.
“We did inform the parents of what their children were doing; just letting them know what types of things they were saying on Facebook.  And there were one or two folks that really overstepped the line,” Koch said. “That’s fine except when somebody takes it to the next level.”
Comments started to become threats. The fact that this issue was only taken as a school disciplinary issue instead of getting the police involved is due to the grace of the administrators. School disciplinary action was the best possible trouble to get into. Otherwise, the problem would have escalated to the level of involving local authorities.
The creation of this group targeting Koch is the least thing she is concerned about. More than anything else, she is concerned about the long term effects that such a cyber blog can have on a student’s future.
“Once you post something, even if you delete it, it’s out there in that cyber skeleton.  That statement is always out there somewhere, so somebody can always get their hands on it,” Koch said.  “So as students are applying for the workforce and colleges, schools and employers go to the web and check out these things. So even if your record is clean and you don’t have any inappropriate pictures, when you make a statement on a page that is obviously a hate page, and you are using derogatory language, they may look at it and say ‘wow, do we really want to have someone like this working for us?’”