'High School Senior Expelled For Tweeting Profanity' (video)

High School Senior Expelled For Tweeting Profanity

By Stephanie Parkinson
March 23, 2012 Updated Mar 26, 2012 at 7:18 AM EDT





GARRETT, Ind. (Indiana’s NewsCenter) - Police were called to Garrett High School Friday after students there threatened to protest. This all comes after a senior was expelled for what he tweeted on his personal Twitter account.

"One of my tweets was, BEEP is one of those BEEP words you can BEEP put anywhere in a BEEP sentence and it still BEEP make sense,” said Austin Carroll, student.

Austin was expelled from Garrett High School after tweeting the F-word under his account. The school claims it was done from a school computer. Austin says he did it from home.

"If my account is on my own personal account, I don't think the school or anybody should be looking at it. Because it's my own personal stuff and it's none of their business,” said Carroll.

"I totally didn't agree with what Austin said but I didn't agree with an expulsion either. I mean if they suspended him for 3 days or something, I would be fine with that but to kick him out of school, his senior year, 3 months to go, wrong,” said Pam Smith, Austin’s mother.

The principal at Garrett High School claims their system tracks all the tweets on Twitter when a student logs in, meaning even if he did tweet it from home their system could have recognized it when he logged in again at school.

“I didn't post the thing at school but their computer is saying that I did post it, and I shouldn't be getting in trouble for stuff I did on my own time, on my own computer,” said Carroll.

Austin is going to an alternative school and will be able to graduate. But he says there is so much more he wishes he could be a part of.

"I just want to be able to go back to regular school, go to prom and go to everything that a regular senior would get to do in their senior year,” said Carroll.

Indiana's NewCenter reached out to the school's administration. The principal refused to comment on camera at the request of the school's attorney.

"If my account is on my own personal account, I don't think the school or anybody should be looking at it. Because it's my own personal stuff and it's none of their business,” said Carroll.