Have you seen this news item from the Washington Post about how fast storms can brew in the digital world? Dave Kori, a high school senior, phoned a public school administrator at home and left a message to express his dissatisfaction that a snow day had not been called (three inches), and to hear the administrator’s side of the story. The administrator’s wife returned the call and left a very irritated message (which she undoubtably regrets now). The message, posted on a Facebook page, then YouTube (with 9,000 viewers since) sparked a tempest in a teapot about first amendment rights among students and how public information should be sought and provided.

What interested me was how this played differently for teens and adults. Students seemed to think it quite appropriate for the administrator to have been called at home:

Kori, a member of the Lake Braddock debate team who said his grade-point average is 3.977, said his message was not intended to harass. He said that he tried unsuccessfully to contact Dean Tistadt at work and that he thought he had a basic right to petition a public official for more information about a decision that affected him and his classmates. He said he was exercising freedom of speech in posting a Facebook page. The differing interpretations of his actions probably stem from “a generation gap,” he said.

“People in my generation view privacy differently. We are the cellphone generation. We are used to being reached at all times,” he said.

I’m also interested in the various methods Kori used to share what he believed was an inappropriate message from the administrator’s wife, and the speed with which it stirred controversy. It reminds me of a murder that took place in a lovely area of Berkeley last year when a high school student invited a few friends over when his parents were out of town. News of the “party” went out in text messages like wildfire, and within an hour the party had grown totally out of control. One student was killed in a skuffle among attendees.

Welcome to the digital world, where everyone is linked, very little communication is private and news is delivered instantaeously.