The biggest news in Eden Prairie today happens to be the recent media attention to the Eden Prairie School District’s decision to investigate and suspend students at the high school for photographic evidence on Facebook which allegedly showed the students consuming or in close proximity to “illegal substances”. You can read more information about the story in both today’s Star Tribune (front page above the fold) and Eden Prairie News.
There are multiple points of view on a subject like this. I won’t get into it because I don’t know all the facts. But one aspect of the issue that I will touch on is that it has exposed the different thresholds used by the City and School District when it comes to dispensing consequences for alleged violations of law and/or policy.
School Districts are authorized in Minnesota to establish policies for student behavior. Compliance with these policies earn students the privilege of participating in extracurricular activities, such as sports, arts, etc. Noncompliance with these policies earn students revocation of their extracurricular privileges or even suspensions from school itself, depending the magnitude of the noncompliance. School Districts can establish their own protocol for establishing these policies, including the rules of evidence used to judge whether a violation has occurred. In this case, the fact that students could be identified in photographs on Facebook with what appears to be alcoholic beverages is sufficient evidence to revoke a student’s extracurricular privileges.
So a question we’ve already received at City Hall related to this matter is this one: Is the City planning to prosecute these students for “minor consumption” violations? For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term “minor consumption”, it is the common term for the misdemeanor when a person under the age of 21 is in possession of or has consumed alcoholic beverages.
The threshold of evidence required to prosecute a person in the court system is different than the threshold used by the School District to revoke a student’s extracurricular activities privileges for the same or similar violations. The court’s threshold is more rigorous. The courts would not accept a prosecution for minor consumption if the only evidence was photographs from the internet. The courts would require additional evidence that proved the underage person actually consumed the alcohol, such as a reliable eyewitness or a police-administered Breathalyzer test. A photograph is not sufficient evidence to prosecute a minor for minor consumption in Minnesota. Whether it ought to be (or not) is an entirely different question.
The rules of evidence are important. The rules are different for schools compared to cities. The rules are different when the consequence is the suspension of a student’s extracurricular activities than they are for suspending a student’s liberty (i.e. - doing some court ordered community service time) or taking a student’s property (i.e. - paying a fine). And if you look at the issue from the perspective of the seriousness of each system’s respective consquences, we might have substanital agreement that the different evidence threshhholds are indeed appropriate.
