A former student at a high school in Florida is suing her school over disciplinary action taken against her for “cyberbullying”.  Katherine Evans, who recently graduated from Pembroke Pines Charter High School north of Miami, Florida is suing principal Peter Bayer for suspending her after she posted negative comments about her English teacher.  Ms Evans created the Facebook group "Ms Sarah Phelps is the worst teacher I’ve ever met!" in November 2007.  The three students who joined only did so to praise Ms Phelps and criticise Ms Evans, after which she took down the page.  But the school learnt of it, and suspended her for 3 days for cyberbullying and disruptive behaviour.

To her credit, she is not doing the usual thing and suing for damages, but to have the suspension removed from her academic record.

While I am usually very cynical about frivolous lawsuits, I actually have a lot of sympathy for this one.  Assuming that what she said on Facebook was not abusive or defamatory, she’s entitled to an opinion, and its not the school’s business to censor it.

In other Facebook fun, here’s another example, following in the footsteps of Kyle Doyle, of how not to use it. 

A group of 5 diners ate and drank their way through a nice meal with lots of wine, at Melbourne’s Seagrass restaurant.  After ordering dessert, they slipped out for a “smoke” and didn’t return, leaving an unpaid bill of $520.  However, the restaurant owner remembered that when the group had arrived one of them had asked about one of his waitresses, who wasn’t working that night.  That waitress gave him a name, and then the owner thought of Facebook, and looked it up, finding a nice happy photo of him and his girlfriend, who was also part of the group of five.  His Facebook profile also identified his employer, which happened to be a nearby restaurant. 

The owner of Seagrass confronted the owner of the other restaurant, where the guy and his girlfriend worked, who promised to deal with it.  Within a short time, the guy’s employer, arrived at Seagrass with his bill evading employee, who paid the $520 bill plus a ‘”generous” tip.    Later he called to say that the man and his girlfriend had been dismissed.

Just desserts, I’d say!