Rodney Purvis has more than 4,400 people waiting to read the next thing that crosses his mind.
A high school basketball player at Raleigh's small Upper Room Christian Academy, Purvis is ranked among the best junior players in the country. He has committed to play collegiately for Louisville and frequently shares his feelings and thoughts with his band of followers on his Twitter account. Many times, his messages on the popular microblogging site are as simple as "Good Morning, World," or "im sleepy."
"It is the way I stay in touch with my fans and friends," said Purvis, who has tweeted about 8,500 times since May.
Purvis' posts are squeaky-clean, but that's not true of those of all high school athletes. Some post off-color comments, often accompanied by pictures of themselves wearing their high school uniforms - connecting their schools with their posts.
Sites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace allow users to instantly tell their stories and express their feelings to mass audiences. There is no filter, no editor and, sometimes, no time to think or reflect.
"With today's technology, the things people may have once done in the back seat of a car or in their homes is available for everyone to see," said Barbara Osborne, a UNC-Chapel Hill associate professor who teaches a course on legal aspects of sports. "We know that the children really don't understand the ramifications sometimes."
Though the N.C. High School Athletic Association and local schools have focused intensely on the issue of sportsmanship in recent years, language that would lead to discipline on the court or in the school is generally unmonitored online, despite the fact that many more people may read a social media post than witness an expletive-filled rant by an athlete during a game.
"What students post online is not monitored and is not a suspendable offense in and of itself," said Michael Evans, a Wake County Schools spokesman. "But the student code of conduct covers a wide area."
Cursing or use of vulgar, profane or obscene language is prohibited by Wake Board of Education policy. Wake County Schools student conduct policies do not directly address social media; the Charlotte-Mecklenburg system does. Johnston County Schools address socialmedia specifically under a harassment and bullying policy.
Legal experts say school systems probably have the authority to discipline students for public posts, but there have been few rulings around the country that would set a clear precedent.
Bobby Guthrie, the Wake schools athletic director, said he had heard of a few cases in which high school athletic directors disciplined athletes for social media posts.
"From time to time, I've heard of a picture that shouldn't have been posted or some comments," Guthrie said.
Thousands of athletes making hundreds, if not thousands, of posts are impossible to monitor, Guthrie said. But coaches have the authority to discipline team members for conduct not only on the field but also away from it, he said.
The influence of social media is illustrated by the role of online posts in local college sports controversies in the past year.
North Carolina football players Marvin Austin and Kendric Burney posted pictures and information about vacations and shopping trips that drew the scrutiny of NCAA investigators. Fourteen UNC football players missed at least one game and seven missed the whole season in connection with the probes into improper benefits and academic misconduct that followed. Last fall, a recent Duke graduate received national attention when a mock "sex thesis" she posted as a PowerPoint presentation online went viral.
Tough to control
Most athletes' posts are benign, but a perusal of area high school players' Twitter posts turned up plenty of profanity and references to sexual conduct. The most explicit posts cannot be printed in a family newspaper.
For example, one recent tweet by a local high school girl basketball player, heavily redacted here, reads, "[Expletive] my [expletive] while ii [expletive] ya [expletive] off." There were many others of a similar nature. The posts cut through a wide swath - public schools, private schools, schools with religious affiliations.
Students generally are aware of the public nature of social media, but just as people sometimes speak too quickly, sometimes they also post too quickly.
Marcus Walker, a basketball player at Enloe, said he uses his Twitter account at times to vent.
"I just write what comes into my head," he said. "Most of the time I don't think about what I tweet. I just tweet."
Walker occasionally deletes a post upon reflection, he said.
Some athletes' posts are popular with thousands of people seeking insights into the recruiting process. That's the case with Purvis and with Millbrook running back Keith Marshall, who is one of the top junior football players in the country. Marshall said he used to restrict his account to a small group of friends, but he had so many requests to follow his Twitter feed that he just opened it for anyone to see.
"I have to keep that in mind any time I post anything," Marshall said.
Coaches and other adults are not immune from social media mistakes.
The Wake system has disciplined a West Lake Middle School teacher for comments made on her Facebook page. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg system disciplined eight workers for posts in 2008 and sent a memo to the district's 19,000 employees reminding them that public postings could jeopardize their jobs and diminish their professional reputations with parents, students and colleagues.
Que Tucker, a deputy commissioner of the N.C. High School Athletic Association, advises coaches to avoid setting up social media accounts and to assume that everything they say in practice is being recorded.
Legal issues
Most area high schools have a code of conduct for students and in many cases place additional expectations, on campus and off, on students who represent the school in athletics and other extracurricular activities. Defining those expectations legally can be difficult.
The authority of school officials to discipline athletes - and other students - for things posted on social media sites pits the schools' ability to maintain discipline and regulate the people representing schools against students' freedom of expression.
"Because social media is so new the law is scrambling to keep up. It is especially true in law dealing with social media and technology in general," said Osborne, the UNC instructor.
Courts have ruled that schools can restrict uncontrolled speech that could disrupt the school and its educational mission.
"It comes down to two things," said Duke law professor Paul H. Haagen. "Schools have fairly extensive rights in regard to high school students. The courts also have said that participating in high school sports is a privilege, not a right. By participating, your First Amendment rights may be limited."
Nationally, several cases are being litigated concerning the ability of coaches and administrators to regulate what students distribute through social media sites, including actions in Indiana, Washington, Mississippi and New Jersey.
Last March, a federal court in Indiana refused to certify as a legal action a lawsuit brought by high school volleyball players who were suspended from their team because of provocative pictures they posted on their MySpace pages.
A U.S. District Court ordered mediation in a lawsuit brought by cheerleaders in a Washington high school who were suspended from the team in 2008 after nude pictures of themselves, originally sent to friends, were distributed to the entire football team and throughout the student body.
A case is docketed for March in Mississippi involving a former high school cheerleader who was dismissed from the squad after posting profanity-laced messages directed toward the cheer captain.
Mike Absher, the boys basketball coach and athletic director of Davie County High School, said the school brought in a district attorney to talk to the entire student body about social media and the law. The presentation emphasized that sex-related texting and sending nude or revealing photos in e-mail might be prosecuted as a federal felony for child pornography. If found guilty, a student could be sent to prison and be required to register as a sex offender.
"We just felt like we had to try to get in front of this," Absher said. "It is a new world."
Shanda McNair, Purvis' mother, talked to him about the nature of social networking before he made his first tweet, and she still occasionally reads his postings.
"I reminded him that people who don't know him will judge him by what he writes. And it is public," she said.
Purvis is careful about what he posts.
"I don't post any profanity, nothing offensive," Purvis said. "To tell you the truth, I'm really surprised by some of the things I see put out there."
