Shawnee Mission East High School senior Emma Sullivan was on a school sponsored Kansas Youth field trip in Topeka to hear Kansas governor Sam Brownback speak.

After the speech, she tweeted “Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person. #heblowsalot.”

According to “The Guardian News” Sullivan had not done any such thing in person, it was just a joke with friends. Sullivan had 60 something followers on twitter before the incident and now has close to 15,000.

“My staff overreacted to this tweet, and for that I apologize,” Brownback said in a statement.

BHS students and staff reactions to the incident:

• “Her tweet was disrespectful, whether she supports Brownback or not. It’s unfortunate she can’t recognize that,” English/Journalism teacher Kit Harris said.
• “Unfollow her, simple as that,” sophomore Morgan Lober said.
• “I feel like she shouldn’t have said what she said. It was irresponsible of her, but I also believe that the response from the school faculty and our government was ridiculous,” junior Austin Kraus said.
• “I think if people are going to personally attack someone, they need to go attack them to their face, not over twitter,” PE teacher Mike Berg said.
• “She’s an idiot,” senior Hayley Schwartz said.
• “I think it was her own personal account so she can say whatever she wants. People can text, tweet and Facebook mean things during school all the time and not get in trouble, so what’s the difference,” junior Glenn Kelley McCabe said.
• “I think it was uncalled for for her to say it, but I think she’s getting in more trouble than she should be,” sophomore Zach Mersmann said.
• “I understand she has her freedom of speech, but I think she should have thought about what she was posting on a social networking site before posting it. It made her sound immature,” junior Abbi Carlson said.
• “I think it’s stupid, but then again he is in charge of the whole dang state so…” sophomore Skyler Shockley said.
• “I feel she shouldn’t have posted on the internet so that everyone can see it, but at the same time she can say it because it’s her own personal account and if you don’t wanna see what she’s saying, unfollow her,” sophomore Hailey Cope said.
• “I feel what she did was disrespectful but at the same time she has freedom of speech and it bothers me that resources are being used to pay people to track down social networks to see what the opinions of teenage girls are,” Paraprofessional Autumn Weiss said.
• “I personally feel that it’s her own personal account where she can post whatever she wants and if the government doesn’t like what she is saying, they’re not being forced to look at it so they can get over it,” sophomore Hannah Hutton said.
• “She shouldn’t have said it, but it was her own personal Twitter account so it shouldn’t have been that big of deal,” junior Katie Pattrick said. 
• “What I think Emma Sullivan did was very immature, but within the rights she has it’s all legal, so no one can do anything about it,” senior Colton Bonner said.