MySpace mom puts house on market

The mother who created a fake MySpace account that led to a teenager's suicide has put her house on the market and is preparing to move out of Dardenne Prairie, MO, according to an article in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Prosecutors allege that Drew defrauded MySpace by violating the company's Terms of Service when she used false information to create a MySpace account for a fictitious boy named Josh Evans.

Thomas P. O'Brien, U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, claims jurisdiction in the case because MySpace is located in Beverly Hills, near Los Angeles.

The MySpace hoax led to the 2006 suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier, who lived four houses down the street from Drew.

The Drews' home was listed last week for $234,900. They bought it in April 2005 for $188,900, according to county records. The Drews made the purchase with the assistance of Megan's mother, Tina Meier, who at the time worked as a real estate agent.

Another neighbor, Christie Kriss, also wants the Drews to leave.

"I can't wait for them to be gone," Kriss said. "We hope she stays in California for like the next 20 years."

Drew faces a maximum 20 years in prison, but her attorney has told the Journal that if he does his job well she won't spend a day in jail.

Another neighbor, 18-year-old Blaine Buckles, said Tuesday he was glad the Drews are trying to leave.

"I don't really like living next door to them," he said.

Buckles attempted to revive Megan the night she ran up to her bedroom closet and hanged herself after receiving hurtful messages on MySpace from the fictitious Josh Evans. She died the next day.

Drew appeared briefly in court Monday. Neither she nor her attorney spoke to reporters following the hearing. She posted a $20,000 signature, or non-secured, bond, meaning she did not have to provide cash or property to be free pending

trial.

Decision reversed on high school newspaper

Last week, I ran an item about a high school principal's decision to shut down the school newspaper following an article and photo about flag burning. That decision has been reversed:

By Rob Rogers
Redding.com
Saturday, June 14, 2008

Shasta Union High School District officials reversed themselves Friday, saying they'll allow Shasta High to keep its journalism class and continue to publish the school's newspaper, the Volcano.

"I'm absolutely thrilled," said junior Amanda Cope. "It's excellent to have the paper back."

Cope, who was set to take over as editor-in-chief this fall, called Mike Stuart, district superintendent, earlier in the week, asking for a chance to prove she and the students she recruited could make the Volcano a serious, respectable publication.

"I volunteered an assurance that we would be legitimate and professional," she said.

Stuart said she made her case.

"We're going to give her that shot," he said.

The Volcano was shut down two weeks ago amid controversy after the paper ran a photo of a student burning an American flag and an editorial defending the practice.

Shasta High Principal Milan Woollard said that the decision to shut down the paper was based on financial issues and already had been made when the photo and editorial ran. He said the incident “cemented” his decision to shutter the Volcano.

The extra class section will cost about $13,000. Woollard said the challenge now is figuring out how to secure a faculty adviser.

Stuart said at this point it’s not known if Judy Champagne, the Volcano’s longtime adviser, will return to the job in the fall.

Champagne would say only that she’s pleased with the district’s decision to honor Cope’s hard work putting a staff together.

“I think it’s great news,” she said.

Stuart said Cope has the school year to build up the program. Then, school officials will look to see if class size and interest in the paper is enough to justify its continued existence.

Cope is confident she can do it. She plans to broaden the paper’s coverage to include articles and features that represent the varying interests of the student body — including international human rights and major test dates at the school.

Enterprise and Foothill high schools shut down their student newspapers a few years ago after their class enrollment dwindled, Stuart said. If students at Shasta High can’t generate enough interest during the next school year, the Volcano will exist only online, Stuart said.

West Valley High School in Cottonwood announced it would shut down its school paper, The Eagle Examiner, this fall for lack of interest. The school had only eight students enrolled for the class for August, Principal Karl Stemmler said.

It was a tough blow for the school. The Examiner is known as one of the best high school newspapers in the state, having won three George H. Gallup awards — one of the highest honors given in high school journalism.

However, the paper has been shut down before. In 2005, class enrollment dwindled and the paper was put on hiatus, only to be started up again the next year.

Stemmler said if interest returns and enough students sign up next year, the school will publish again.

“We’ll bring it back,” he said.

Cope worked hard to secure what she thought were enough students to fill the class at Shasta before the news of the closure came. She said she specifically sought out students who would bring professionalism and intelligence to the paper with the goal of “revolutionizing” the Volcano.

Stuart said now they have the chance to prove themselves.

“We’ll see how the kids do,” he said.

Missouri woman pleads not guilt in MySpace harassment case

Earlier this year, students in my communication arts classes at South Middle School discussed the case of a Missouri woman who opened a MySpace account, masqueraded as a teenage boy, and drove a 13-year-old girl to commit suicide. At the time, no charges had been filed against the woman.
Since then, federal charges have been filed against the woman and she pleaded not guilty today:

Lori Drew, accused of helping create a fake MySpace profile and using it to harass a 13-year-old Dardenne Prairie girl who later killed herself, pleaded not guilty this morning in federal court in Los Angeles.
The pleas were expected and a minor milestone leading up to what the real battle will be in the case – whether prosecutors' use of a law normally used to target computer hackers will work in a cyber bullying case.
Megan Meier, who struggled with depression, hung herself in her bedroom Oct. 16, 2006 , shortly after receiving this message: “The world would be a better place without you.” Megan thought it was from “Josh Evans,” a 16-year-old boy with whom she'd developed an online relationship, but officials said the boy was a creation of Drew and others designed to find out what Megan was saying about Drew's daughter, who was a former friend of Megan.
Drew's indictment on a felony conspiracy charge and three charges of illegally accessing MySpace computers was handed down last month. U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Brien said then that Drew and unnamed “co-conspirators” violated MySpace's rules and terms of service by using false information to set up the Josh account.
They then used that account to “harass” Megan, O'Brien said.

More schools separating the sexes

There is an old saying- Everything that is old is new again and that appears to be what is happening in education.
An article in today's Wsshington Post explores a return to separating the sexes at schools:

With encouragement from the federal government, single-sex classes that have long been a hallmark of private schools are multiplying in public schools in the Washington area and elsewhere. By next fall, about 500 public schools nationwide will offer single-sex classes, according to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, based in Montgomery County. That's up from a handful a decade ago. The approach is especially attractive to some struggling schools in the market for low-cost reform.

The 2002 No Child Left Behind law cites single-gender classes as one "innovative" tool to boost achievement. But anti-discrimination laws banned widespread use of such classes, allowing them only in certain instances, such as sex education lessons. A change in federal regulations in 2006 gave schools more flexibility, allowing boys and girls to be separated as long as classes are voluntary and "substantially equal" coeducational classes are offered.

Principal kills student newspaper over flag-burning photo

A Redding, Calif. principal has shut down the high school newspaper for the upcoming school year after publication of a flag-burning photo. The following article is from the Redding Record Searchlight:

By Rob Rogers
Tuesday, June 10, 2008


The adviser calls it sabotage, the principal finds it embarrassing and the superintendent is offended.

The students see it all as a matter of freedom of speech.

Shasta High published its last issue of the Volcano, the student newspaper, before the end of classes last week with an image on the front page of a student burning the American flag and an editorial inside defending the practice.

"The paper's done," said Milan Woollard, Shasta High principal. "There is not going to be a school newspaper next year."

Shasta had been looking at cutting the paper already -- funds are tight as the school anticipates receiving fewer state dollars from Sacramento this fall, Woollard said.

"This cements that decision," he said.

Judy Champagne, the Volcano's faculty adviser, is upset that some of the students decided to use the newspaper as a platform to engender controversy during the last week of school. Planned for the paper was coverage of Shasta's prom and announcements of scholarship recipients and other news.

Those items made the paper, she said. The editorial and image of flag burning were added at the last minute.

"I think that the students were sabotaging what should have been a positive last issue," shesaid. "I think it's very sad that we're not going to have a paper."

Upsetting to Champagne, who's been the newspaper's adviser for years, is what she called a lack of news judgment from some of the students on staff. While flag burning may be a salient national issue, nothing has happened in the north state to make it a current, local issue.

Until now.

"I thought it was bad journalism," she said.

The editorial, written by Connor Kennedy, who graduated Friday, explained that a person has the right to burn the flag, that it's protected speech under the first amendment. Kennedy did not return a phone call made to his home Monday.

Administrators at the school and district level said students have a right to run the photo and print the editorial under the same right.

But all of them called it poor judgment.

"I think that they misused it (their freedom of speech)," Champagne said. "I think this was a game for them."

Mike Stuart, Shasta Union High School superintendent -- a U.S. Army veteran and paratrooper -- said just because the students have a right to defend and run the image doesn't mean the administration has to approve of it.

"Personally I find it offensive," he said. "Especially the last newspaper of the year. It's like a parting shot."

Stuart said it showed the students' immaturity.

"I think it was especially self-indulgent," he said. "I don't like it at all."

Kennedy, who won an award from the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution earlier this year for an essay he wrote, was president of Shasta's student union and helped organize a demonstration on campus last fall to protest the high school's decision to combine its junior and senior prom and the vote that led to the decision.

He and other students successfully argued the matter in front of the school board and forced Shasta administrators to hold a campuswide revote on the issue.

Woollard said he believes Kennedy and other students placed the photo and editorial in the paper simply to get a reaction. And it's what they've got, he said.

"I'm just embarrassed that the thing was ever done," he said.

Columnist complains about grinding and freak dancing

Teen dances are turning into sex shows, according to syndicated columnist Brent Bozell:

The freak-dancing wars are a symptom of a larger disease. In too many schools, parents and principals and chaperones are letting the inmates run the asylum. What should be a strict, clean, carefully observed behavior code is being challenged and ultimately rejected by students -- spoiled punks -- emboldened enough to defy and intimidate the adults who would enforce those codes. What's left is a tacky event where teenagers dress in expensive tuxedos and gowns and dance like they weren't wearing any clothes at all.

On the website Slate a few years ago, twentysomething author David Amsden attended a prom in Rockville, Md., as a journalist to observe the modern customs. It wasn't pretty. "Most, however, are dancing in a style you could call Rap Video Imitation Gone Wrong: the girls back into the boys, who proceed to lift up the girls' dresses in a way they apparently think is subtle, but in reality is anything but. Then they try, and fail, to move to the beat." One girl's dress was hiked up so far the author could see her bellybutton ring.

Bozell concludes by writing the following passage:

I simply refuse to believe that a school principal cannot issue a mandate -- yes, a mandate -- declaring that any student participating in this kind of behavior would summarily be dismissed from school. Period. Ah, but you can hear the Wobble-Knees already. What, specifically, is this kind of behavior? How do we distinguish between sexy dancing and sexual dancing? How do we know it's indecent, never mind obscene? Are there regulations banning it? If not, who are we to impose our morality on others? The hand-wringing would be endless -- embarrassingly, nauseatingly endless.

And you parents out there who condone this activity: You disgust me. If I were chaperoning one of these dances and a boy attempted to perform this kind of lewd activity on my teenage daughter, I'd have a solution. I wouldn't ask him please not to simulate anal sex on her. I wouldn't refer him to the contract he signed at school. I'd beat the stuffing out of him.