[K12OSN] Re: OT: "MySpace.com" or "policies for when computer use leads to ass

[Steven Santos]

Thank you one and all, you have given me a great deal of information.

For the record, my child was one of the ones that was assaulted in school.

The school is looking for a new solution to deal with this epidemic.  At the
same time, the local police department is taking on the issue, and are now
monitoring myspace and a few other sites regularly, specifically looking for
things that may lead to assaults in the schools.  They are also taking a
stand that all further assaults are going to be prosecuted, regardless of
anything else (we declined to prosecute the 18 year old senior that
assaulted my child, as it would have effectively meant he looses his collage
scholarship, a price we felt was too high for what happened, seeing as he
was deceived as well)

As a teacher, and the director of a youth program I will say that we do have
a myspace account for the program.  Our own policy is to allow students to
log in and use myspace, as long as we know about the account, this is done
by adding the schools account as a friend.  Since just about all of the
students we work with that use myspace have added that account as a friend,
its really easy to monitor what they are saying and doing when a problem
does start to arise.  On the other hand, we have never had to deal with
assaults and the like.