Pascack Valley has been abuzz lately about our story on the recent virtual day. Several students have reached out to members of our Editorial Board and expressed their grievances over The Smoke Signal embedding their Tweets within our article. While we understand these concerns, we would like to address a couple of the main points brought up to us.

First, we would like to point out that anything posted on Twitter or most other forms of social media is public domain and can be accessed or reused by anyone. Therefore, The Smoke Signal’s use of these Tweets was legal and did not break any rules. According to Twitter’s terms and conditions, “The Twitter service makes it possible to post images and text hosted on Twitter to outside websites. This use is accepted.”

Second, the Editorial Board of The Smoke Signal feels very strongly about students having the right to voice their opinions. We had no intention of embarrassing anybody or getting them in trouble; our intention was simply to educate our readers on how students actually felt about these virtual days.

A topic that seems at this day and age to be beaten to death within school systems is digital citizenship. We here at The Smoke Signal have heard the common phrases again and again: “Anything online is permanent” and “be careful what you post.” Although we had no intention of making PV students uncomfortable, we feel that they should own up to the opinions that they expressed online, and should not be ashamed or uncomfortable with their own words.

Therefore, to answer the question posed by many students who contacted us, we will not be taking down or deleting any of the Tweets that were included in our article for the sole purpose of accurately telling the story. As student journalists, our only intention was to reveal the different stances taken on these two virtual days, and we were proud to acknowledge and give voice to the many opinions we found. We want to encourage PV to say what they mean and mean what they say, and feel the freedom to do so in their own school environment.