With large swaths of the United States dealing with ice and snow over the last few days, Twitter has been a hotbed of rabid, creative, and at times distasteful campaigning from students looking to influence administrators’ decisions about whether to call school off.
Not really all that different, I suppose, from the days of plotting to prank call the superintendent’s house if he or she didn’t cancel school for a few inches of snow.
I doubt supes and district administrators have time to pay much mind to what students tweet, but if they did, they’d be highly entertained. A few samples below from Montgomery County, Md. schools—the district I live in—which waited until 5 a.m. this morning to cancel school.
@mcps these conditions are dangerous! My brother fell down the stairs! Please save our souls pic.twitter.com/fPRfCJL3oJ
— Sam N (@nussenzwagger) December 8, 2013
More then 12 inches of snow in front of my house @MCPS you gotta call it pic.twitter.com/vWjdlExIiO
— dom (@dpdomm) December 9, 2013
@MCPS cancel school and make us as happy as the kids on your website pic.twitter.com/pK8hLWxewQ
— Gustavo Marinho (@MeGustavo14) December 8, 2013
H/t to Alyson Klein at Politics K-12 for the fun headline.
UPDATE: Montgomery County’s superintendent, Joshua Starr, an avid user of Twitter himself, sent an open letter to parents at the end of last week calling for “cybercivility.” His letter was prompted by numerous tweets he received from students that he described as offensive and disturbing, and in some cases, threatening to him and others.