A Long Island student who was suspended for five days for posting a video with anti-bullying subject matter, has been reinstated by Longwood High School.
Jessica Barba created the video as part of an assignment for her business and communications class where she was told to produce a persuasive promo or advertisement. News stories described the video as 'controversial'.
Barba shot the controversial six-minute video for an assignment in her business and communications class. She says she had been asked to create a persuasive promo or advertisement.
After submitting the video for her class assignment, she posted the video to Youtube. In the video she plays a fictitious teenager who is bullied on social media sites, becomes depressed and commits suicide. For the video she created a fake Facebook page for the character. Before and after the video there is a disclaimer that the story is fictional. The day after posting it, the video generated much discussion among the students and even moved some to tears.
Sounds like an A+ for the project, right? Fulfilling the requirements of her assignment, and more. Jessica was called in to the principal's office expecting to be praised for her work, but was told she would be suspended for her 'disruptive' video.
"I was asked to go to the office and I thought they were going to pat me on the back for the job I did on the video," Barba said. "Instead, the principal told me I would be suspended for five days because my video disrupted the school."
Superintendent Allan Gerstenlauer said Tuesday that the video was "unfortunate in that it created a substantial disruption to the school."
Jessica was told to take the video down, which would lessen her 'punishment'. She did, and still was suspended for five days. School officials deny they demanded the password to the Facebook page from Jessica, yet when she tried logging in again was blocked.
For the video, Barba created a fake Facebook page for her character, and even though it was noted that the page was not real, a parent saw the video, became alarmed and called the police. Barba claims she gave up the password to the fake Facebook page after the assistant principal asked her for it, but the school denies that.
"All I know is," Barba said, " when I went back to re-log in again, I was blocked and now the page has been taken down."
According to Barba, school officials suggested she remove the video from the web because that would help soften the blow of her punishment.
The school officials seem to be confused. First, they said Jessica was suspended for causing a disruption to the school, then it was for creating a fake Facebook page. It seems suspending her caused more of a disruption.
The suspension caused an uproar within the student body. Students began wearing t-shirts that said "Free Jess" and the controversy garnered national attention.
After the hearing with school officials Thursday, Barba said she accomplished more than she could have imagined when she undertook the project.
"Bullying is 100 percent preventable," she added.
The school has reinstated Jessica after a hearing, and the suspension has been wiped from her record. As far as the school is concerned the matter has been 'dealt with'.
Longwood Superintendent Allan Gerstenlauer said in a statement that the matter had been "thoroughly investigated and dealt with" but added he could not comment with any detail because of student privacy laws.
The levels of stupid here are innumerable. From a parent calling the police, to the administators printing out pages from the fake Facebook page without the pages showing the disclaimers, to the school officials calling this 'disruptive', which was exactly the point of the assignment. As Jessica's father said in the Today show
interview, she is a budding videographer and would have made this video whether or not it was a school assignment. The kid did good - she brought attention to an important issue among high school students and deserves an award, not a suspension.