Facebook Used To Railroad Student

'Shoot' has more than one meaning

Valdosta State University sophomore T. Hayden Barnes protested a multi-million dollar garage construction project by the school. College president Ronald Zaccari responded by expelling him.
At the crux of what is now a federal lawsuit against Valdosta State, the document informing Barnes of his expulsion included a printout of an image posted to his Facebook profile. Inside Higher Ed described the photo's contents:

The collage featured a picture of a parking garage, a photo of Zaccari, a bulldozer, the words “No Blood for Oil” and the title “S.A.V.E.-Zaccari Memorial Parking Garage,” a reference to a campus environmental group and Barnes’s contention that the president sought to make the structures part of his legacy at the university.
As additional evidence of the threat posed by Barnes, the document referred to a link he posted to his Facebook profile whose accompanying graphic read: “Shoot it. Upload it. Get famous. Project Spotlight is searching for the next big thing. Are you it?” It doesn’t mention that Project Spotlight was an online digital video contest and that “shoot” in that context meant “record.”

Barnes's protest consisted of posting letters, sending emails, and writing letters in criticism of the garage building plan. The construction would tap student fees for $30 million.

It appears Barnes had the misfortune of engaging in his student activism at a time when the country reeled from the aftermath of the horrific Virginia Tech shootings. The lawsuit brought by Barnes, described as a "licensed and decorated emergency medical technician," accused the school of going overboard in looking for reasons to throw him off campus:

“Knowing that Barnes had availed himself of counseling services made available to all students by VSU, Zaccari secretly and repeatedly met with Barnes’s counselor seeking to justify his decision to expel him,” the lawsuit states. “What he learned from both the campus counseling center and from Barnes’s private psychiatrist who was consulted in the matter, however, was that Barnes had never exhibited any violent tendencies and that he did not represent any danger either to himself or to others.
While students should not have an expectation of privacy on Facebook or any social networking site where they make information publicly available, they should not have to fear their activities being used against them on a basis of being unpopular.


News Tags: Social Media, T Hayden Barnes, Lawsuit, Valdosta State University, facebook
About the author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Follow me on Twitter, and you can reach me via email at dutter @ webpronews dot com.