Catholic School Prohibits its Students from Using MySpace.com at Home

St. Hugo of the Hills School in Bloomfield, MI, has enacted a policy that specifically prohibits any student enrolled in the private school from maintaining a MySpace.com web page.

The Schools website states that students may not send or display offensive messages or pictures on or off the St. Hugo network. In addition their website states:

“The �myspace.com� sites of many of the students violate these rules. Therefore, it is the RULE of St. Hugo School that NO ENROLLED STUDENT SHALL have a �myspace.com� web page or any similar type personal Internet site. Students were informed on March 20, 2007 that they must delete their �myspace.com� accounts if they wish to continue to attend school at St. Hugo. If a family chooses to allow their children to continue their �myspace.com� account, they will not be allowed to continue as students at St. Hugo.”

This story made it into the top 10 most popular articles on digg.com and has created quite a stir among those posting comments.

I am not an attorney, but I believe that since the school is a private institution, that it enjoys freedom of association and can set any restrictions on its students that is sees fit. Now that doesn’t mean I agree with the school’s position. In fact, if I was a student there I would take down my MySpace page and put up a FaceBook page just to show how short sighted this rule is.

If anyone out there has experience with matters like this, post a comment and let me know if I am off base on this one.