Let's say that she actually tweeted something clearly vulgar. Say she used her 148 characters to say, "Brownback has a brown back from santorum. He sucks and blows big floppy donkey dick. #takesituptheass".
How would that change anything? She'd still be perfectly within her rights to do it, and it wouldn't even be breaking any valid school rules. This entire 'vulgar' line of reasoning is a red herring. It has nothing to do with the issue.
Yes and no.
If she were an adult, then I'd be able to agree with you completely. But in the US, kids in school do not enjoy the same rights to free speech as adults do. So it is possible that the content of the tweet does matter.
Let me run through several different possibilities to illustrate when content when content would matter and when it wouldn't.
1. Student in Social Studies class, during school hours, texts to another student sitting nearby. Mr. Madeupname, the teacher, sees, intercepts one of the phones, reads the text.
Case (a): the text says "Jimmy is cute".
Case (b): the text says "Social Studies is the most boring *********** class ever; Mr. Madeupname is full of ****!"
In both cases the student has broken the rule against texting in class. But in my opinion the teacher is justified in meting out a more severe penalty for case (b) than for case (a). In this case, content matters; free speech rules do not apply.
2. Student is at home and tweets to a friend. The teacher happens to have subscribed to the student's tweets and thus reads it.
Case (a): the text says "Jimmy is cute".
Case (b): the text says "Social Studies is the most boring *********** class ever; Mr. Madeupname is full of ****!"
Since this is speech on the student's own time, the content of the tweets is none of the school's business.
(It is the parents' business, and some parents might choose to discipline a child for using the kind of language in the second tweet. But that's a separate issue.
So under certain circumstances (student not on school grounds and not on school hours) I agree with you:
Yes, content clearly does not matter; and under other certain other circumstances (student on school grounds during school hours) I have to disagree with you:
No, content clearly does matter.
Here's the problem: this incident seems to have occurred in a gray area between those two rather clear poles. The students went on a school trip to the state capitol, where they saw Sam Brownback, and shortly after seeing him the student made the tweet. If the tweet was made during the course of the trip, then it was
on school time and
during a school activity -- but
not on school grounds.
If the tweet was made while the students were in the capitol building and listening to Brownback, then I'd say the same rules apply as in a classroom. It's a classroom activity, simply one being held in a different location. In that case, tweeting during Brownback's speech would be the same a passing a note in the classroom. The tweet would be a violation of school rules, and its content would be relevant to the severity of the offense.
But if the tweet was made after the students left the capitol building and were in transit back to the school, then
technically they may still on school time and subject to school rules but
realistically I think different rules apply.
It's my
opinion that if they were on a school bus or otherwise travelling back to the school then entirely different (and much more relaxed) rules apply. To my mind, tweeting while sitting in a school bus is no more a violation of school rules than talking to the person sitting next to you (which, in the classroom, would be a violation of the rules).
That still leaves the question of whether content matters in this gray area. Even if the tweet itself is not a violation of school rules, use of vulgar language in it could well be -- if she's doing it on school time.
If she were to say aloud to the person sitting next to her on the school bus, "
Jimmy is cute", I can't imagine that being considered a violation of school rules; but if she were to say aloud to the person sitting next to her, "
Social Studies is the most boring *********** class ever; Mr. Madeupname is full of ****!" I think it is quite reasonable for school officials to consider that a disciplinary matter.
So content
does matter for
oral communication during school trips. The question is whether it matters for
electronic communication during school trips.
Kids on the bus aren't allowed to yell "**** you!" at each other. Is it okay if they tweet "**** you!" to each other instead? I think it's reasonable for the teacher in charge of the trip to say no, and to discipline any student caught doing that. So yes -- content of electronic communication made during school trips does matter. I can think of two ways in particular that it matters:
(1) If the content of the student's tweet had been in some way disruptive of the field trip, it would be a matter for school concern.
But it wasn't. Nothing untoward happened on the trip as a result of the tweet.
(2) If the content of the student's tweet had been something which did damage to the school's reputation, then that would also be a matter for school concern.
The example you gave ("
Brownback has a brown back from santorum...") is a good illustration of this. If a student tweets something like that on her own time, it's no one's business. But if a student tweets something like that during school hours, it's a matter of legitimate public concern. It is not unreasonable for someone to ask:
Why are teachers permitting students to tweet things like that when they're supposed to be studying and learning?
If a student had tweeted what you wrote from a classroom during school hours I think complaints about the school's lack of discipline would be justified, and asking the student to make an apology would not be entirely out of line. So a discussion of the contents of the tweet is not entirely irrelevant.
(Obscure NM '70's reference)