I remember when an army recruiter came to my gym class. It was all fun and games until he asked us to fill out forms for a raffle drawing. The forms actually said “application” right on them. I gave up my chance at a free t-shirt and I just didn’t fill one out. I hid the blank form and then threw it away later. I don’t know if the recruiter actually filed the forms as applications, but I think it was a little sleazy to do what he did anyway.

In the second scenario, I think it was wrong for the students to write inappropriate things, but not wrong to give false information if they felt pressure to fill out the forms. The punishment was a little severe though.

By the time that these students are considering college, they should probably know that these things are optional and that it isn’t always wise to disclose personal information. That said, they are still within the hold of a mandatory education system. It has been deemed that until the age of 18 people are not wise enough to make most decisions for themselves (as ridiculous as that may be). It would have been nice of the teacher to make it clear to the students that the forms were optional.

On the other hand, it may be a good learning experience for the students to fill out those forms, get fifty pages of junk mail a week, and learn that they might not want to give out that information later when they’re on their own.

Overall, I don’t think there was really an actionable problem in the first scenario.

The second scenario was an abuse of authority by the teacher. There is no reason that a group of students should be required to fill in these forms. As for he students who made the misogynist/homophobic comments, they performed terribly flawed civil disobedience. This is a teachable moment. When you are acting against an abuse of authority, do so in a way that doesn’t make you look like a doofus. Still, this is America, right?

To my mind, what was inappropriate was the requirement (explicit in the second scenario, implicit in the first) that the information be provided. Not collecting information from high schoolers per se.
The powers that be have decreed that you can’t solicit information from people under the age of 13 on the internet- this seems like a reasonable standard for allowing kids to be exposed to this kind of marketing.

The student responses in both scenarios could have been because they felt the request/requirement inappropriate, but they might just have been amusing themselves (I can’t count the number of “comment cards” that I filled in with goofy information when I was a teen)
The silly answer seems fine to me- although if it was based on privacy concerns it’d be ideal to express that explicitly.
Although I don’t see a huge problem with the kids in the second scenario being punished, I don’t quite agree with the rationales other people have put forth here. As I see it, the cards were a communication *from* the students *to* the college representatives- the teacher has no right to judge them by the same standards that apply to assignments or school policy.
Nonetheless, this was a guest that the teacher invited. If the teacher believes these students, after being reprimanded, will be continue to be rude and reflect poorly on the school, not taking the students on field trips to other schools is understandable.
(of course, this same logic applies somewhat to the silly answer, but my personal opinion is a teacher would have to be oversensitive to worry about the impression “1234 Streety Avenue” would create)

Yeah, both college reps were “just doing their jobs” in trying to data-mine the schools. And in both cases the kids were in the charge of the teacher, who could have and should have stepped in — if they were prepared ahead of time for this sort of thing. Are teachers prepared to protect kids’ privacy and tell them they have the option to opt out, and that no incursion onto their privacy by any third-party representative is mandatory? I mean, if it WAS mandatory, the schools could just give the colleges their own records.

I agree with the majority of the comments suggesting that the only discipline that should be carried out is in teaching the rebellious and vulgar that vulgarity isn’t appropriate, even when rebellion IS. There’s so much effort at enforcing conformity in schools that when a kid rebels *appropriately*, it should be encouraged, even while discouraging *inappropriate* rebellion.

Silly answers are fine in my book. Slurs or obscene answers are inappropriate and should be disciplined. Missing one or two field trips seems appropriate.

Kids (and some adults) need to learn to use a minimal standard of conduct even when they don’t like how they are being treated. There are many ways to handle a conflict without slurs or obscenity. It would make sense for those student to take some time to write a paper on that theme while they are missing the field trips.

I doubt that the slurs had much to do with the privacy invasion anyway. Ask yourself how these same kids would have filled out an anonymous survey on the helpfulness of the tour?

There are plenty of ways to make material available to the students and their parents that don’t involve collecting student data. If the teachers believe the students should get information, they can send the information home with kids themselves.

In this case, I rather applaud the students who “misbehaved.” It was an appropriate time and place for rebellion. They need to be taken aside and taught that slurs aren’t the wisest choice for rebellion and why, but seeing as the point was (justly) to do something wrong in filling out the forms, any action should be directed toward education about the slurs (however the school’s policy already handles this) rather than punishment. At least of the students.

BOTH scenarios are wrong by the college rep. Asking high school students to fill something out to hand in is just wrong.

The respective colleges can have forms to give out that are preprinted with the college address on an envelope for the students to FILL OUT AT HOME and then send in if they so choose.

In both scenarios the high school teacher should have spoken up and said that these forms should not be handed in now.

I do not think any of the students should be punished even for profanity. These students were put into an uncomfortable situation.