Online Popularity = Totes NOT Worth Criminal Penalties!

We hear about people doing strange things all the time to gain more followers on social media or to go ‘viral’. While some of these things are super funny or interesting to watch and harmless, some ways of gaining popularity online can be dangerous to the one doing them and/or innocent bystanders. As social media becomes more and more popular, the line has become blurry regarding what people will do to gain a following.

In Miami, Florida a 28-year-old woman snuck onto a high-school campus by posing as a student. She was walking around campus, talking to students, and handing out fliers with her Instagram handle on them in attempts to gain more followers. She was wearing a backpack, had a skateboard in her hands, and was carrying a painting to blend in. She even lied to security officers when stopped and questioned about why she was on campus, saying she was just looking for the administration office. You just have to love social media!

When security realized she was not a student, they attempted to confront her, but she rushed off campus as the potential threat was called in to administrators. She ignored the officers’ commands to stop, also known as ‘resisting arrest’.

She was arrested on charges of burglary, interfering at an educational institution, and resisting an officer without violence. This situation shows just how far someone will go to be popular on social media. No number of followers is worth facing criminal and civil penalties or potentially hurting yourself or others.

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Questions: 

1. Because this crime was committed on a school campus, the woman may face an enhanced penalty (meaning she’ll get more of a punishment than if it had been a normal charge like trespassing).   Think about other crazy things you have seen people do online to gain popularity and the example above.  Given that, why do you think there should or should not be special ‘enhancements’ for when people do things for ‘clout’, ‘likes’, ‘follows’, or other social media benefits that resul in criminal activities taking place?  
2. What are the minimum and maximum criminal consequences this woman could face for her crimes if she did this (and got caught) in Nevada instead of Florida? 
   
3. What more can schools do to keep unwanted visitors off campuses, and how could they do that without reducing students’ rights?
4. In what way might a school actually reduce students’ rights while attempting to prevent situations like this, and how do you feel about that possibility (in other words, is the loss of rights worth the ‘security’ in this case, and explain why or why not)?

Be sure to provide full explanations for each of your answers. For more details, you can read the article this piece was sourced from here:
https://www.clickorlando.com/news/2021/05/12/florida-woman-posing-as-student-goes-to-high-school-campus-to-promote-her-instagram-police-say/#//

Contributed by: Marlee Carpenter