Cynthia Moreno did what many young people do and take for granted every day.  She had posted what she thought was a private blog on Myspace, a social networking site. This one action has dominated her life for the last five years.

Moreno’s story started in 2005 when she was 21 and a student at University of California at Berkeley.  She posted “An Ode to Coalinga,” a rant against her hometown and the people who “are nothing, were nothing, and remain nothing.” This post has led to accusations, death threats, major upheavals in her life and her family’s, two trials at the state court level and one in the Court of Appeals. It is certainly setting a precedence for who owns what rights for works published on social networking sites.

An alumna of Fresno City College and a former Views editor of the Rampage, Moreno said she learned the hard way that privacy is ever more elusive, especially in this technology-driven existence.

Growing Up

Moreno grew up in Coalinga. She was a straight A student and worked really hard to achieve her best.

“I wanted to go to a really good university; that was my ultimate goal,” said Moreno. “My goal was to go to Harvard; that was my dream.”

Moreno said she was a victim of harassment in high school. Classmates made fun of her, bullying her about her weight and for being studious. Moreno enjoyed learning,” I pulled all nighters; I was really dedicated to school,” she said.

She graduated from Coalinga High School at the top of her class and earned a full ride to UC Berkeley where she enrolled in Legal Studies with intentions to go to law school to become a lawyer.

At Berkeley, Moreno blossomed, shed her baby fat and said she was “immersed in an intellectual environment where individuals value hard work and commitment in all aspects of their lives.” She wrote in her blog that she loved her new life, her classes and seemed well on her way to becoming “one bad *** corporate Latina lawyer who is not going to take ***♦ from anyone or anything.”

Ode to Coalinga

In 2005, Moreno went back to a Coalinga high school homecoming game because she wanted to watch her younger sister who was a cheerleader.

“I decided to drive down that weekend from Berkeley, however while at the game I had a number of bad experiences,” Moreno said.

According to Moreno, when she arrived at the game, people were talking a lot about her changed physical appearance. She remembers that she and her father were walking down the stands when two girls started talking about her. They had allegedly looked at Moreno and said, “look at that b*tch, she changed her appearance.”

Moreno said she was shocked. “I didn’t know the girls, but their comments really made me angry,” she said. “I had worked really hard, and I go to a football game and I start hearing these remarks that really get under my skin.”

She said the more she thought about it, the more upset she got. “No one cared about my studies or how I was doing at Berkeley, rather they were more interested in my appearance,” said Moreno.

Moreno acknowledged she had lost a lot of weight, which even her high school teachers immediately recognized. As she walked up one of the ramps at the game, a teacher yelled at her through the loud speaker, “Oh my god, you look great!”

These comments angered Moreno, “I felt nothing had changed, people were only talking to me because of how I had changed physically, and I didn’t like it.”

That same weekend, Moreno drove back up to Berkeley still fuming at what had transpired that weekend. “I talked to my roommate about my experience, and she could understand,” said Moreno.

It was then that Moreno sat down and wrote her blog, “An Ode to Coalinga.” (Read Moreno’s “Ode to Coaling” at fblinks.com/ode.)

“I didn’t edit it, I just wrote it and hit enter,” she said. “I wrote about my feelings and how I didn’t like Coalinga.”

Her Myspace blog was posted for six days. Within those days, she received three responses from people. One of them was from her best friend, while the other comments were from former Coalinga High graduates.

Moreno said that her friends seemed concerned about her wellbeing, but that they supported her. “When I went through and explained to those people what happened, they understood. They let it go; it was just a blog,” said Moreno.

High School Principal Enabled Local Newspaper to Republish Myspace Rant

Days after Moreno posted her blog, Roger Campbell, the then principal of Coalinga High School, now superintendent of the Coalinga-Huron Joint Unified School District, found Moreno’s blog and faxed it to the local newspaper, the Coalinga Record.

According to records, Campbell claims he found Moreno’s blog on his desk and proceeded to read it. Campbell said he found it to be offensive and made the decision to send it to the newspaper for publication. The newspaper published the blog in its entirety and signed her name, without asking for her permission and despite efforts by both Moreno and her parents to prevent its publication.  

“It wasn’t right for them to publish my blog, I didn’t give them permission,” said Moreno. The residents of Coalinga reacted with fury. They were angry, and it showed in their letters to the editor and in the war it waged not only against the 21-year-old, but against her entire family. Many in the community questioned how one of their own could write such a thing to the paper? How could she insult the whole town? How could Moreno disrespect the town that nurtured and propelled her to her status at U.C. Berkeley.

“The community was outraged, they were reading something that I wrote that was bashing them,” said Moreno. No one, not even the editor that published her blog, explained that her rant was a private online blog and was never intended for the Coalinga audience.

Weeks after Moreno’s blog appeared in the newspaper, she started receiving death threats. “People were telling me that if I come back to Coalinga they would do this….to me,” Moreno said. She decided to file a formal complaint to the superintendent, asking him to help fix the problem. Moreno never received a response. She continued to seek help, but it seemed like all had turned against her.

“I made a complaint to the Fresno County Office of Education, to explain my situation, pleading for help,” said Moreno. She never received a response.

After numerous attempts with the educational board, Moreno decided to file another formal complaint to the Office of Education in Sacramento. They too ignored her request.

In a last attempt, Moreno filed two different civil rights complaints. “I sent one to the department of civil rights and the other to the department of education, both in Washington D.C,” said Moreno.

Moreno said they later sent her a letter stating they could  not help her and advised her to contact a lawyer.

After searching through 200 lawyers, Moreno finally found one that would take her case.

“I filed a lawsuit against the school district, the principal as an individual, and the newspaper,” she said.

Moreno’s Struggles

In Coalinga, Moreno said her family started getting harassed by people in the town.

“The people were outraged,” she said. Students and teachers at school harassed Moreno’s sister, while her parents’ trucking business plummeted.

“My sister would be questioned about my actions,” said Moreno. “They would say, ‘
why would your sister write such a thing?'”

Everyone was offended by what Moreno had written. “I don’t understand why people were angry,” said Moreno. I thanked the people who had helped me get to Berkeley,” she said.

Things escalated. Someone fired a shot at their home and hit the family dog; Moreno’s younger sister was being harassed in high school, and their business was boycotted. All of this led the family to flee from a town that had been home for more than 20 years as well as a multi-million dollar business. She said, “My parents decided that it wasn’t safe for them to live in Coalinga, so they made a quick move to Clovis.”

Meanwhile, Moreno could not focus on her studies. “My parents were calling me everyday with new problems,” she said. “There were too many things going on at one point that I could not handle it anymore.”

Moreno felt helpless that she could not do anything to fix the problem in Coalinga, so she decided to write a letter to the newspaper, apologizing for her blog.

“The newspaper didn’t publish it,” she said. I wanted my letter to calm down the community, to let them hear my side,” she said.    “While at Berkeley, I got really depressed. I didn’t take my mid-terms or my finals. I got dismissed from Berkeley, and had no choice but to come home,” Moreno said. “I had worked so hard to get to Berkeley, I felt like I had lost everything,” she said.  

“The blog published in the newspaper had ruined me forever,” Moreno said.

In Clovis, Moreno’s parents struggled to get her to go back to school. “I cried a lot, and slept a lot; ultimately, I had no motivation to do anything. At one point, I was suicidal. I didn’t want anyone to know me or see me,” she said.

“Trying to pick myself back up was the hardest two years of my life,” Moreno said about trying to rebound.  She wanted to prove them all wrong.  She enrolled at Fresno City College, joined the staff of the Rampage in the fall of 2007 and discovered her passion for journalism. She was a reporter in her first semester and then became Views editor in the spring of 2008. She said the years at FCC helped her regain some confidence in herself and reaffirmed all she believed about herself.  

In 2008, Moreno wrote a formal letter to Berkeley requesting a reinstatement. “I explained the things that had happened, and how much I wanted to go back and finish my education,” she said. Her request was granted and she was able to go back in the fall of 2008.

The Court Ruling

The first verdict in the matter of Moreno versus her principal, her high school, and the school district found that she could not state a claim on both the newspaper and school district. She appealed and the appeals court returned the case for retrial. She decided to separate the defendants and then drop the newspaper out of the lawsuit.

“The newspaper told me that if I appealed and lost, they would charge my family and I over $100,000 in attorney’s fees,” said Moreno.

Out of fear, Moreno and her family decided to settle. “I didn’t want to settle, but that was a lot of money I would have to pay for the risk of losing,” she said. The Coalinga Record closed months later.

Moreno sued the principal for invasion of privacy.

To claim invasion of privacy, Moreno needed to allege that something private was disclosed, and her posting did not qualify as private once it was published on Myspace.

In addition, the court found that you have no expectation of privacy in materials published in a social networking site because you identify yourself by first name only, as long as pictures and other information are present; this allows viewers to identify you.

The final verdict declared the principal’s conduct was outrageous; however, he was not the substantial factor that caused the damage to Moreno and her family.  

“When they read the verdict, my mother and I broke down into tears,” said Moreno.

She said, “I have never been through a trial before but it was stressful, costly and there was no justice.”

Isauro Villarreal, Moreno’s boyfriend, assisted her attorney in selecting the jury.

According to Villarreal, there was plenty of evidence to show that the Coalinga superintendent was a substantial factor in causing harm.

Villarreal believes that Moreno’s case is quite different. “The jury thought since it is on the World Wide Web, then it was going to get out anyway.” In other words, because the internet is a relatively new area, most people cannot understand all its facets.

“They felt that what the principal did was wrong but overall the harm that occurred was a result from what she wrote herself and how she put it out there herself,” Villarreal said.

Cynthia Today

Moreno, now 26, is a reporter in Fresno working for the Spanish newspaper, Vida en el Valle, which is published by the Fresno Bee.

“Looking back, I know that the ‘Ode to Coalinga’ is going to haunt me forever,” she said. “If I hadn’t gone to the game, all of this probably wouldn’t have happened.”