Call me old-fashioned, but I am a firm believer in the constitution and the rights it provides. Specifically, I believe “we the people” should have our freedom of speech. We should be able to express ourselves in the ways we see fit, even if that means students express their anger on social media.

No one told me that this right was made invalid when I started high school. No one warned me that the things I say in the privacy of my own home could be used against me by high school administration. No one told me that my typical anti-high school venting could come back and bite me. Students frequently post about how awful their AP Calculus homework is or how much they hate the latest book they’re reading in Honors English. These posts are just to be expected, but somehow the school system still manages to punish students for their comments.
How can the school use something as simple as a tweet against me? Something said in fewer than 140 characters should not be considered a problem. The fuss seems to be that insults published online can be a distraction to students and faculty; however, if people are distracted by one sentence long, grammatically incorrect twitter posts, then our priorities need to be reevaluated. Our priority should be education, not he said/she said drama.

The school controls everything from what I can wear to when I can go to the bathroom, so why can’t social media be the one place of freedom? My social media should be exactly that, MY social media, where I can express myself and my opinions freely, where I can say which classes I hate, where I can complain about my homework load, where I can exercise my right to free speech.