Imagine sitting in class when all of a sudden the teacher grabs a student’s book and throws it across the room out of sheer anger. Seeing the urgency of the situation, you decide to record your teacher and everything that is happening.
Students at a South Carolina high school were put in a similar situation when Deputy Ben Fields forcefully threw a girl out of her seat and across the room after she refused to leave the class as a punishment for using her phone. A student recorded the incident and uploaded the video, thus bringing attention to student rights along with calling for legislative changes. However, did she have the right to do so?
California Education code section 51512 “prohibits the use of any electronic listening or recording device in any classroom, by any person, including a pupil, without the prior consent of the teacher and the principal.”
“Students shouldn’t be recording teachers unless the teachers are aware of it,” Principal Mary Jo Fosselman King said. “Hopefully they would come in and talk to us before they ever feel like they need to take a video.”
Students who record their teachers without their consent may be suspended or expelled for misusing their electronics on campus; however, just like teachers, students also have rights when it comes to their own privacy.
“We can’t force anybody to delete anything, but we can ask them to if it’s causing issues here at school,” Mrs. King said. “We usually will get parents involved or we could get law enforcement involved and let them handle it, but physically, we can’t force anybody to do anything.”
Unfortunately, not everyone sees eye to eye regarding the rules that prevent students from taking videos of their teachers.
“I think students should be allowed to record their teachers,” Sophomore Xuan Kuang said. “Videos act as a source of evidence, and can prove to others that the teacher is really how you said he was.”