Tweets about Israel land New Jersey student in principal’s office

Under the New Jersey Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act, which only came into force in 2011, she could be suspended or expelled.

She said administrators warned her that her comments about Israel and a fellow student on Twitter might have violated a state law against bullying.

A 16-year-old high school student in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, set off a social media storm this week when she live-tweeted a meeting with a school administrator who had called her into his office to discuss tweets she wrote that were critical of Israel’s policy toward Palestinians.

Since the tragedy, a greater vigilance surrounding cyber-bullying has been widely applauded, especially in New Jersey.

This may be part of the reason school administrators were on alert when they saw that Koval had been tweeting controversial statements about Israel, including one referring to a “pro-Israel” classmate who had unfollowed her.

She recently tweeted that she was glad a pro-Israel student unfollowed her…

Administrators, including Principal James Marcella, reportedly searched Koval’s phone because they thought she might be recording the meeting and told her she could be sued by the Department of Education for doing so. “You may not like what this person tweeted but they have a right to voice it w/o fear!” “They said that she was accused of bullying some girl and it wasn’t just what she said over Twitter which is what is being portrayed from her account”, said Mohammed Huzien, a student.

Now the law has been cited by a principal against a student who made a series of anti-Israel tweets, one of which mentioned a pro-Israel student without naming her, over the winter break, New York-area blog Gothamist reports. Koval also drew support from her Twitter followers with the #IStandWithBenny hashtag.

In another audio recording, the school official says: “You can sit there with your smug additude right now, but if it’s gotta go into a bullying case (even though) you think it shouldn’t be, but the state says it is, you’re gonna lose”.

One tweet: “Principal just called me down”.

“Well that’s your interpretation”, the administrator said.

“It’s against state law to express unpopular political views on the Internet, now”, she tweeted.

Despite the fact that Bethany Koval has thousands of followers on Twitter, she did not like the attention she was receiving in school, so she went home early on Thursday.

“We stress at the outset that at no time have district officials sought to censor or reprimand any pupils for their online speech”, said Fair Lawn Superintendent Bruce Watson in a statement.

Bethany Koval, who calls herself Benny on Twitter, expressed support for the Palestinians in the Middle East and was not kind to what she calls Zionists in Israel.