The Privacy Act & Vindictive Students

mikesown
Sat, 05 Jan 2008 22:06:34 +0000

*** DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A LAWYER AND THIS POST IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE OF ANY KIND ***

If you mean legal “violation of privacy,” then it is not. The first amendment protects most personal speech(except slander - when you KNOWINGLY say false information, and it damages someone), so if someone tells you something, you have every right to repeat it to whomever you want, as long as you are not defaming the person by stating false information.

However, if you mean ethical “violation privacy,” that is another matter up for debate. My personal opinion - it’s fine, and should even be encouraged for offenses that warrant it. If someone cheats on a test, what do you do? You tell the teacher. Discretely, certainly, but you tell the teacher. There are a number of reasons for this:

1. You know the person did something wrong, and you want to make sure the wrongdoers get punished.

2. It will help the person in the long run - college admission is (comparatively) not as important as later things in life. For example - if you plagiarized on a paper in high school, you may get a slap on the wrist, you may even get suspended or expelled, and may go to a state school as a result. However, if you plagiarized on an academic paper(i.e. a published one), you can kiss grad school, and most research employment opportunities goodbye.

All of this is not to say you should be a so called “tattle-tale,” alerting someone to EVERY offense of the rules, but certainly, and I hope everyone would agree with me on this, severe violations(cheating and plagiarism) warrant this punishment, even if the violator is your friend. I would say blatantly, knowingly misrepresenting yourself(and having the nerve to tell others about it) on a college application warrants this. Again, I hope people on this board agree with me on this.