Hey.

From the Startle-Gram, my one-time local newspaper, comes a story about a 13-yr old who got suspended from school for three days for using an old DOS-based form of IM to send the message "Hey!" to the 80 computers on his school's network.

There's no doubt here that the kid is the real victim here, but I don't know which of these is more chilling:

"If they are allowed to experiment and do things on the computers that the teachers have not specifically given them permission to do, we would never get any computer education accomplished."

That's from Beverly Sweeney, the "campus computer liaison," the one who had to ask said 13-yr old how he did what he did. That's bad enough. But in true Texas form, the author of this piece, unsatisfied with merely identifying the injustice of the kid's suspension, apparently sees it as his duty to embarrass Sweeney in the process. Thus the conclusion of the piece:

As long as public school is public, the Beverly Sweeneys of the world need to know that it is our right and duty to look over their shoulders and question what they do. In this case, the punishment of Carl Grimmer was overkill, but the response of the school's computer liaison shows that public education really does demand greater oversight from us outsiders, certainly not less.

Oh, super. Let's pause for a moment and reflect upon the fact that it wasn't Sweeney's decision, ultimately, to suspend this kid, but the principal's. Okay. Stop pausing. Earlier in the essay, Lieber (the author) explains that "what I find more offensive is the unsolicited explanation I received from campus computer liaison Sweeney." Why he should be either surprised or offended to receive a statement from someone who is clearly a principal actor in the story he's telling is beyond me. Further beyond me is exactly how this demonstrates the kind of "oversight" he calls for at the end of the article.

Better, more up-to-date policies, ones that keep up with technological change? Yes.

More opportunity for students to pursue their interests in technology? Yes.

More precise usage of the term 'hacker'? Who gives a shit?

More oversight by idiots who think that they understand education? Uh, nope.

As Sweeney rightly (if snottily) points out, it is a different and difficult world, one that is interfered with plenty by those with no expertise or experience. Sure, this should have been a learning opportunity rather than an excuse to suspend a student, but does it really take a hacker to understand how the word "Hey" could have been a heck of a lot worse? The kind of journalistic "oversight" provided here by Lieber is the worst kind of fakery--he takes on an easy target, pontificates, and demeans all public school teachers by implication. Hey! There's the problem.