Safety Management Categories: Profanity & Hate Speech

With this Gaggle Speaks post, we’re launching a new series specifically about our Safety Management categories.

When Safety Representatives discover inappropriate content in student communications and files, they categorize them so that school and district emergency contacts can easily discern why they’re inappropriate.

The Profanity & Hate Speech category is for terminology that students use inappropriately or with hurtful intent, whether in conversation with others or privately. Most often, incidents aren’t seriously inappropriate, but rather it’s a matter of teaching students common courtesy and how to communicate appropriately with peers, educators and even privately on technology provided by the school or district.

When inappropriate content is discovered, students can receive minor warnings, while spam is deleted. Inappropriate content is sometimes simply the result of students playing practical jokes on one another. For example, we’ve recently identified a trend of student signing their friends up for email lists on KKK websites. Occasionally, items that are reviewed for Profanity & Hate Speech will reveal a serious situation. Safety Representatives will sometimes discover personal attacks, threats, domestic abuse and more.

The primary reason Gaggle Safety Management searches for items within the Profanity & Hate Speech category is to promote digital citizenship as well as college/workplace readiness. We want students to know that Profanity & Hate Speech will not be tolerated in most work environments and can create issues in college. By teaching students what language is not acceptable using their K-12 provided technology, they’ll be more prepared as they move on to the next stages in life.

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