Radnor student’s Facebook poem—stupid, yes, but is it criminal?

A Radnor High School student made a video of herself reciting a poem with violent imagery. 

Here are some excerpts from the story in The Inquirer, which quotes an affidavit of probable cause:

Cold metal in my hands / I am at school, / I'll shoot
you down, / You stupid fool.

It goes on to talk about starting a fire with gasoline.

The smell arises from the floors to the ceiling, / The
gasoline is spreading, / I love this feeling.

Though her attorney maintains that she intended to keep the video private, she posted it on her friend’s Facebook page. Huh?  Yes—Facebook—the place you go to deposit your most intimate and secret thoughts.  It doesn’t take a social media expert to realize that a high school student’s Facebook page isn’t really the best place to post things you mean to stay “private.”

It didn’t stay private, of course, and once Radnor High was alerted to the poem, its anti-violence policy required school officials to notify the local police.

In our post-Columbine world, schools are very sensitive to perceived threats, and have developed security policies that lead to some pretty dramatic over-reactions. The police and the District Attorney have thus far followed suit, prosecuting the girl in a manner that follows
the letter of the law, but with a whiff of overkill.

Hopefully the incident will be investigated and the case will be promptly closed, because it just doesn’t seem to be a criminal matter. From what I've read, there’s no indication so far that she’s a troubled student, and there’s no apparent evidence of malicious intent. 

Maybe it’s just an example of an 18-year-old doing something stupid—just like I did stupid things, and just like everyone else did stupid things when they were eighteen. That doesn’t make her a criminal. That makes her eighteen.

It reminds me of the Lower Merion laptop case. The School District’s use of cameras without parental consent was simply stupid. Anyone who really believed it was part of some insidious School District plot to spy on kids was either paranoid or looking for a payday.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong in writing a poem with violent imagery. Art comes in all colors and descriptions. But once you post something on the world’s biggest bulletin board, don’t be surprised when everyone sees it.