Home Web Sites Thrust Students Into Censorship Disputes
By TERRY MCMANUS
Published: August 13, 1998
SEAN O'BRIEN had a beef with a high-school teacher. He thought that the 36-year-old band instructor, Raymond Walczuk, tended to blame him unfairly for problems around school. In response, Mr. O'Brien, a 17-year-old baritone horn player from Westlake High School, near Cleveland, last spring set up a home-based Web site that insulted Mr. Walczuk.
Mr. O'Brien, for instance, ran a photo of Mr. Walczuk and described him as ''an overweight middle-age man who doesn't like to get haircuts.'' Mr. O'Brien also said Mr. Walczuk ''likes to involve himself in everything you do.'' He included Mr. Walczuk's home address and phone number.
When word of the site got around school, the administration suspended Mr. O'Brien for 10 days, told him to remove the Web site and threatened to expel him. He and his parents took action, accusing the school district of violating his right to free speech and suing the district for $550,000.
The broad outlines of the O'Brien case may have a familiar ring. Legal experts say school censorship of student Web sites outside schools is on the rise, giving civil liberties advocates plenty of reasons to fret -- and intervene.
Ann Beeson, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer in New York, said, ''These Web cases have become somewhat analogous to the student newspaper cases of the past, where the school tries to say, 'You can't talk about condoms in the school newspaper.' Except that with Web sites, people tend to become more alarmed because people outside the school find out about them.''
While the United States Supreme Court issued a decision in 1988 on the censorship of student newspapers, it has yet to deal with a case involving school censorship of a Web site set up by a student outside school. In the 1988 case, it ruled that a high school principal in Hazelwood, Mo., could control the content of the school newspaper because an article interfered with the school's ''basic educational mission.'' But when students publish outside school, on the Web or elsewhere, they are covered by the First Amendment right to free expression.
In recent months, a number of Web-censorship incidents have occurred. In McKinney, Tex., a middle-school student, Aaron Smith, was suspended for setting up a Web site called C.H.O.W., for Chihuahua Haters of the World, on a school computer. In a more serious case, a 15-year-old in Statesboro, Ga., was accused of posting terroristic threats against his high-school principal on a personal Web site and was arrested.
An Internet magazine called Bolt Reporter (www.boltreporter.com) runs school-newspaper articles that have been banned by administrators and gives students a forum to discuss school censorship.
While the courts have made no definitive rulings on how much discretion schools have in such cases, civil libertarians say that they expect students, and the First Amendment, to prevail if they ever go before a jury with censorship complaints.
The A.C.L.U. of Eastern Missouri will file a First Amendment suit soon in a dispute similar to the O'Brien case, said Denise Lieberman, a legal director with the group. The case involves a Marble Hill, Mo., student who was forced to remove a personal Web site in February by Woodland High School. Among other things, the student, Brandon Beussink, used his Web site to poke fun at Woodland High's official Web site. He also encouraged visitors to tell the principal that the page was bad and used profanity in describing the school and faculty members.
Woodland High officials complained about the vulgarity and ''open disrespect.'' Woodland High disciplined the teen-ager even though he immediately complied with its order to remove the site.
''The school suspended the student for 10 days and failed him for the entire semester,'' said Deborah Jacobs, executive director of that A.C.L.U. district. Mr. Beussink will start school in the fall as a second-semester junior instead of a senior.
Ms. Jacobs said the law was clear on issues of free speech for students. Schools cannot interfere with what students say on their own time outside school, she contended, adding that the principle extended to statements made on the Internet.
Woodland High School's lawyer, Kenneth McManaman, sees the Beussink matter in a different light. In a May 5 letter to Ms. Jacobs, he said: ''There is no doubt in my mind that the school district had the right, authority and even obligation to prohibit this sort of activity by Brandon Beussink. Instead of continuing to whine, I would suggest Mr. Beussink take his punishment like a man, get back to school and start behaving like he should in the classroom.''
In a later interview, Mr. McManaman said, ''If the A.C.L.U. thinks they can come down here and win a case, let them come.''
In the O'Brien case, an out-of-court settlement was reached last April in which the district reinstated the student, issued an apology and paid him $30,000 in damages. A judge had earlier said that Mr. O'Brien could re-establish his Web site, but he decided against that.
Beverly Reep, the former superintendent of the Westlake School District, said the district believed that it had technically violated Mr. O'Brien's constitutional rights. ''And whether you believe something is right or wrong, it's irrelevant to the degree that there was a technicality in his favor,'' she said. ''We made a mistake.''
The district's lawyer, John Britton, added, ''The First Amendment was overlooked.''
Nevertheless, Ms. Reep said Mr. Walczuk had been demeaned by Mr. O'Brien's Web comments, and some agree with her. In an anonymous letter posted to the Cleveland Live Web site, a student in Mr. Walczuk's class said: ''Sean has always had an attitude toward Mr. Walczuk, but why did he have to make a Web site about him? If a teacher was to make a Web site about a student that they didn't like, I can guarantee you that they would be fired or suffer severe consequences.''
For his part, Mr. O'Brien feels vindicated by the settlement -- he split the award evenly with his lawyers and donated a portion to the A.C.L.U. -- but the experience has left him far from sanguine. ''I guess it would've been nice if the whole thing didn't happen and I just went to school like normal,'' he said.
Mr. O'Brien said that facing Mr. Walczuk in class after the suspension had been awkward. He said that he would not return to band next year. (Mr. Walczuk did not reply to repeated requests through his lawyer for an interview.)
Mr. O'Brien's advice for anyone firing a Web broadside at a school or teacher? ''Keep it true,'' he said. ''Don't lie.''
Photo: Sean O'Brien won a dispute with Westlake High School in Ohio over his Web page. (Roger Mastroianni for The New York Times)