Will I be excluded?!?

[Hannah]

I made a comment on my (private) twitter account about the fact that my head teacher is a "bitch" for making us come in on a snow day, and my parents received a phone call saying that when we return on Tuesday I'll be called into my head of houses office and "questionned" about it, and talk of being potentially suspended. I was just wondering if this was allowed? My twitter account is private and the school does not follow me so I am confused as to how they'd have seen it, but nether the less they have. Can I be reprimanded for this? If was an indirect comment (she was not tagged in it) and also was not intended/permitted for the schools viewing. It was also a joke, and I feel it is an infringement of my privacy, as I didn't wish for them to read it. Also, does my freedom of speech apply in this situation? Someone shed some insight onto grounds of suspension please? I am a very good student with no history of any trouble and I want to know if this will cause me big problems or do I have a point in that they shouldn't have been snooping on my private life/tweets?
Thankyou! I am from the uk if that helps
By private account, I mean that I changed the privacy settings so that only selected people can access and read my tweets, if my account wasn't on private I'd never have done it.

[b]

and you were stupid enough to think that what you put on twitter is private

[Dynamicquilt798]

Twitter isn't private. Anything you say on Facebook or Twitter is immediately public property, so you shouldn't post anything about someone you wouldn't be comfortable saying to their face. It's likely to be treated as if you said it to her face.

[Lucas]

someone dobbed you in mate and yes you probably will because your putting a bad name on the school, my advise is to find out who dobbed you in and have serious words

[womble]

Someone has grassed you up and yes you can get suspended for it sorry

[Latif]

It's possibly is an infringement of your privacy, and freedom of speech. Personally they have no right to suspend you for expressing yourself.

Tell them this and if you are suspended I think you should just object to it and make an example by going in. Saying you don't want to lose out on lessons, for your own sake.

Good luck, you shouldn't get in too much trouble.

[Sean]

It's an understandable thing to say. But I guess libelous comments aren't a good thing to vent in public. Twitter can be seen by pretty much anyone - if it's not a sketchy follower then maybe an adult from school saw it. My school had an incident involving a facebook group that targeted a teacher, which was somehow found and resulted in exclusion for a fair few students. Fingers crossed it doesn't come to that.

I think the best thing to do would be to tweet again apologising for your comment, whether it's seen again or not. Not sure if you can edit tweets but I guess that would help to. You could prepare a letter of apology to the person in question and hand it to them for them to read, and that might help your case.

I don't think one inclusion/exclusion really matters. We all have our moments, eh.

[XTIAN170174]

If your tweets do not get in the way of your grades, the only good reason to suppress them and/or punish you is to make an example of you to others.

Suspension seems excessive - detention would perhaps be the better counter, although you'd suppose the effect of being at home with access to Twitter but knowledge of the consequences to your actions, hopefully keeping you from doing it again is a shrewd move on their part...