Tuesday, March 28, 2006

 

myspace problems

I can't find any record of this story online, but I've seen it on local tv news around here and it deserves discussion on several levels. Either 8 or 10 students were recently expelled from Pensacola Christian Academy after school administrators found incriminating information on their myspace accounts: they were listening to christian rock music. School rules forbide the listening of any kind of "rock" music. The report actually only mentioned the specific reasons for one student, as that student's mother was complaining that though she understood her child had disobeyed school rules, she felt the punishment a little severe.

At first, you just want to be angry at a dumb rule that forbides students at a christian school to listen to certain types of christian music, in their free time, no less. The truth is, though, that they are a private school and they can make whatever rules they want. If you don't like the rules, you don't have to enroll your child at that school. There are people who have serious problems with christian rock for several reasons. Some would say that it is immitating the sex and drug culture prevelent in American Society and that a school teaching Christian morals should forbide anything that even gives off the appearance of "evil." I know some people have a problem with a market of a kind of music that is only for Christians. It seems that if a band has a good enough talent, they shouldn't have much problem making popular radio play, no matter the subject matter of their songs. After all, I think "Come out and Play" is a good song, but I don't support gang warfare that makes neighborhoods a dangerous place to be. Makes ya thankful for bands like Switchfoot who don't hide the fact that they are Christians and even sing about their Christian life and God, but they write GOOD songs.

It seems like maybe they were not respecting the rights of the students by looking at their personal web pages, but the truth is that myspace, xanga and even our beloved blogspot are public access pages. There are a lot of news stories out there right now trying to remind people that perspective hirers have all the right in the world to look at pictures you have posted on a public-access sight and refuse to hire you based on your admission to illegal or unethical activities. So friends and neighbors, if you feel the need to post the intimate details of your life online, you may want to consider making your page private so that only people you want will be able to see your pages. The alternative there, really...is don't put incriminating stuff online in a public place, unless you want to be punished or to otherwise reap the "rewards."

Comments:
A Prof of mine at FSU was turned down from a job at Harvard because two people had writen a comment on a rate your professor site that said that her class was to easy. It was sad, she was an excellent teacher and made learning any material easy.

Its not just what you write about yourself, but also what you write about others that can have negative reprocussions. We are slowly all becoming 'internet' aware and realizing its reprocussions.

Interesting story about the Christian Rock expulsion.
 
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