Tweet About Athletics Gets High School Student Suspended

The Wichita Eagle

http://www.kansas.com/2013/05/07/2793492/heights-high-suspends-senior-class.html

The senior class president at Heights High School has been suspended for the rest of the school year and barred from most graduation activities for posting a tweet that school officials say insulted athletes at the school.

The tweet, posted on Wesley Teague’s personal Twitter page Thursday, said: “‘Heights U’ is equivalent to WSU’s football team.”

It prompted angry reactions from some classmates who said Teague was disrespectful to athletes, particularly underclassmen who coined the phrase and sometimes use the hashtag “#HeightsU” on tweets about Falcon football or other athletic endeavors.

Wichita State University dropped its football program after the 1986 season.

Teague, 18, says the initial tweet and a few he posted in response to critics immediately afterward were harmless and his punishment too severe. School officials said they created a disruption both online and at the school, where several students argued about the comments and Teague’s right to post them.

“It’s completely unfair, and I just think it’s a joke,” Teague said Tuesday.

“It’s a 100 percent truthful tweet and it wasn’t meant to offend a single person or group of people. … I only meant that ‘Heights U’ doesn’t exist because it doesn’t. We’re not a university.”