Opinion

I was talking with a client of mine who happens to be a veterinarian. We were discussing the fact that she sees puppies come in that are showing worrisome behaviors that if not dealt with, will be much worse when the puppy becomes an adult.

Fall field trips are in full swing for children and their teachers. While a teacher might notify parents of an upcoming field trip a week or two before the big day, the preparation work needed for a field trip to become reality sometimes happens many months prior.While our family’s farm has hosted many groups in the past to talk about farming sorghum, wheat, corn or soybeans in central Kansas, the requests for visits have definitely increased since we began growing and marketing popcorn.

Last month, current and former high school students in Lawrence filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that the school district’s use of Gaggle, a self-styled “safety management tool” that enrollees must put on their devices as a prerequisite to attend class, violated the students’ rights to free expression and due process.Gaggle claims its software helps schools “proactively identify and support struggling students — before it’s too late.” Further, according to the district’s website, although the task of “proactively identifying” problems involves Gaggle scanning “students’ district-issued accounts for harmful content,” the process is not overly invasive in part because the software “cannot and does not monitor personal devices or any personal accounts.”But the student plaintiffs disagree, claiming that Gaggle has “flagged email communications accessed via personal devices, including messages sent from personal phones through school-issued Gmail accounts.” Thus, according to the plaintiffs, Gaggle “subject(s) all students to round-the-clock digital surveillance” and “suspicionless searches and seizures of student expression on a scale and scope that no court has ever upheld — and that the Constitution does not permit.”The outcome of the case will depend largely on whether the district can show that implementing software designed to monitor students the way it did was closely related enough to an important government interest — namely, student safety — to justify Gaggle’s intrusion into the students’ lives.But with the plaintiffs on the record that they are seeking to “set a national precedent” with this lawsuit, it may be awhile before the legal issues at play are resolved.In the meantime, it’s worth noting the variety of allegations contained in the lawsuit that the use of Gaggle was nonsensical, and in turn, violated the students’ rights. If those allegations bear out as the case progresses, it will become correspondingly more difficult for the district to show that its use of Gaggle complied with the Constitution.I was struck by three instances that seemed particularly arbitrary and counter to any notion that Gaggle advances student safety.First, when student journalists at Lawrence High School began to realize in the spring of 2024 that Gaggle was quarantining some of the work they had prepared for publication in the student newspaper, the Budget, they devised a plan to test the extent of the software’s reach.

Poor Elbridge Gerry. He wasn’t even a fan of this.