News stories in recent years have regularly appeared where students, staff, or faculty members at public institutions of higher education are investigated, rebuked, or reprimanded by their college or university for online expression. Such cases have the potential to raise First Amendment questions. In particular, there are several instances of students being scrutinized for their social media expression, with the content and context of that speech varying widely.
In July 2015, the former president of Valdosta State University settled a $900,000 lawsuit for expelling a student who posted on Facebook a “satirical environmentalist collage” that showed pictures of the university president and parking deck construction. The student was punished after the university president interpreted this criticism of the campus’s decision to build additional parking structures as threatening.
In January 2017, Cooper Medical School of Rowan University filed a “Professionalism Intervention Report” against a medical student after she posted on Instagram a topless photo of herself at a nude beach in Europe that included “#freethenipple.” Although the student’s nipples were blurred to conform to Instagram policies, administrators told the student to remove pictures from her account that a “reasonable person” would interpret as “sexually explicit.”
In February 2017, a University of Central Florida student was suspended after posting on Twitter pictures of a break-up letter from his ex-girlfriend, with the student negatively “grading” the letter’s grammar in a series of posts. The student’s suspension was later overturned.
In November 2017, a University of North Florida student was suspended after allegedly posting a photo of himself shirtless, with a swastika tattoo on his chest, and holding a semi-automatic rifle. The Facebook photo was accompanied by the following statement: “[I]t is okay to be WHITE!!!!! Let SDS and the other clowns come at me, I will shut them down. Fuck the BLM BS!!! I am WHITE and PROUD, and these queer balls have yet to confront me on campus.”