Considering the things some kids (or even just some people) get up to these days, swearing isn't exactly a heinous crime. Sure, there's a time and a place, and school is neither of those, but is it a crime worthy of expulsion?
One teenager in Indiana was recently expelled from school for using a certain four letter word on Twitter. Austin Carroll posted the following from his Twitter page:
"F*** is one of those f***ing words you can f***ing put anywhere in a f***ing sentence and it still f***ing make sense."
Not exactly Yeats, but not surprising when you consider the poster is a teenage boy. Carroll was forced to face serious consequences at school. Though it was his personal account and Austin claims the message was sent while he was at home, the school says otherwise. Indiana NewsCenter writes that the principal of Garrett High School said their system tracks all the tweets on Twitter when a student logs in, so "even if he did tweet it from home their system could have recognized it when he logged in again at school."
Austin's mother said that while she didn't approve of the tweet, she thought a suspension would have been a more appropriate punishment. Her son is now attending another school but is said to be disappointed that he will miss out on the last three months of his senior year and the events (such as prom) that go along with them. Meanwhile, students at his now former high school are apparently unhappy with the revelation that the school is tracking their tweets. INC reports that police had to be called on Friday as students threatened to protest.
