Student Teacher Fired, Loses College Degree for Drunken MySpace Pic

[Logan Frederick]

Student Teacher Fired, Loses College Degree for Drunken MySpace Pic

A student teacher has lost her education degree over a picture posted on her MySpace profile.

Federal judge Paul S. Diamond has closed the case against 28 year-old Stacy Snyder, who sued her school for withdrawing her education degree after it discovered a picture on her MySpace captioned "Drunken Pirate." The picture showed Snyder drinking from a plastic cup while wearing a pirate hat, something that, along with the caption, was deemed "unprofessional" by her college.

Snyder sued Millersville University of Pennsylvania last year for $75,000, her education degree (which was withdrawn and substituted with an English degree) and teacher's license. She was previously working as a student teacher at a local high school to complete her course work, but was let go a few days before her final semester ended due to poor student and peer reviews questioning her teaching abilities.

Sadly and prophetically, one of Snyder's blog posts began, "I have nothing to hide. I am over 21, and I don't say anything that will hurt me (in the long run). Plus, I don't think that they would stoop that low as to mess with my future."

"This was not about First Amendment rights, it was about performance, and she clearly did not do what was necessary in order to earn a degree in education," said the university's president, Francine McNairy.

Her role as a teacher in a public school hurt her case.

"Because she was some sort of de facto employee [of the high school]," added her lawyer Mark Voigt, "she got fewer rights than would be afforded the average student."

MySpace [http://myspace.com] has been devolving into a media-friendly source of dramatic stories, ranging from employers firing workers over profile pictures to nationwide suicide cases [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/87554-Jury-Selection-Begins-In-MySpace-Suicide-Case]. When using social networking sites, it's recommended that everyone be wary of who might be watching, friend or not.

Source: Chronicle [http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3503/online-drunken-pirate-photo-can-cost-student-her-degree-judge-says] via ReadWriteWeb [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/social_network_profile_costs_woman_college_degree.php]

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[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Not even "facepalm" covers this. Are teachers not allowed to have myspace and drink?

"This was not about First Amendment rights, it was about performance, and she clearly did not do what was necessary in order to earn a degree in education," said the university's president, Francine McNairy.

That makes no damn sense.

 

[PlasticPorter]

I learned a long time ago that if you attend or even apparently WORK for a public school you forefit almost all the rights given to you by the bill of rights

 

[Blind Punk Riot]

Not even "facepalm" covers this. Are teachers not allowed to have myspace and drink?

"This was not about First Amendment rights, it was about performance, and she clearly did not do what was necessary in order to earn a degree in education," said the university's president, Francine McNairy.

That makes no damn sense.

On ski trips at my school I drank WITH my teachers, and in upper sixth I used to drink with my maths teacher. Who I play frisbee with in our local team.

That sentence really made me feel cool.
Hot damn!

 

[Gxas]

Businesses everywhere are doing this now. They will actually hire a person to google prospective employees, check their facebook, and their myspace. If anything is "unprofessional" then they are discarded as a candidate.

The problem I find with this story is: If you are over 21 (here at least), drinking is legal, whether you post pictures of it on myspace/facebook or not. I could understand if she was underage, but honestly, how many high school kids care whether their teachers drink or not?

 

[the_tramp]

Has anyone ever heard of setting their profiles to 'private'? Of course if they're your 'friend' then they can see it but I still believe that this is a ridiculous case. I understand that teachers shouldn't be inappropriate around kids, but they have to have their own life and can't sit around not doing anything incase it comes back to haunt them.

Fair enough if it was because of poor student-teacher evaluations then that's acceptable but don't even bring up the drunken myspace picture.

 

[TheBluesader]

Hmm. If I was the penalized teacher in question, I'd be really pissed off. It's starting to look like being active on the internet at all is demonic association. It's not like the schools think their personnel aren't drinking and doing whatever they want. Their only problem seems to be with the internet connection.

Of course, I know why the schools are doing this. You hire a teacher with drunken photos online, that teacher makes a parent mad, that parent finds the picture, and now you have a whole mess of whining and suing you'd rather not deal with. And you're going to question hiring teachers from colleges that don't vet potential teachers for you, because you don't want to do it yourself. The college gets a bad rep, and that interferes with their business. So it sucks, but what else are they supposed to do? People won't ever stop whining and suing, and that's the real problem here.

Speaking personally, I remember teachers I had in middle school who were so busy trying to score with each other and plan where they were getting blasted after work that they ignored bullying and tried to avoid any kid coming to them with problems. Yes, they were just sucky teachers. But if this hadn't been before the internet was everywhere, you'd better believe at 14 I would have MySpaced for photos of their drunken antics to show my parents to ruin their crap. My parents don't sue, but they do like to whine.

 

[ElephantGuts]

Not even "facepalm" covers this. Are teachers not allowed to have myspace and drink?

"This was not about First Amendment rights, it was about performance, and she clearly did not do what was necessary in order to earn a degree in education," said the university's president, Francine McNairy.

That makes no damn sense.

I don't think that did make sense. How does drinking alcohol equal "not doing what's necessary to earn a degree in education"? This whole story is screwed up. Somone can't be a teacher because they drank once? Are we going to have another prohibition now?

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

Many companies check people's myspace pages before deciding if they want to hire the person nowadays. There are even services that build you a professional-looking myspace page.
But if you decide to put a bunch of personal information on the internet, I don't give a shit what happens to you. I think this teacher getting fired is a good thing. Social networking is stupid and dangerous.

This... sort of.
Social Networking is not inherently evil, but if you ask me, keeping a MySpace page isn't a good idea for looking professional... MySpace has become the 4chan of social networking sites.

 

[ckeymel]

Not even "facepalm" covers this. Are teachers not allowed to have myspace and drink?

"This was not about First Amendment rights, it was about performance, and she clearly did not do what was necessary in order to earn a degree in education," said the university's president, Francine McNairy.

That makes no damn sense.

I don't think that did make sense. How does drinking alcohol equal "not doing what's necessary to earn a degree in education"? This whole story is screwed up. Somone can't be a teacher because they drank once? Are we going to have another prohibition now?

I think you guys are misunderstanding. He is simply saying that it had less to do with her drinking and more to do with the fact that she didn't know what the hell she was doing in a class room. Perhaps they included the drunken pictures to strengthen their case, however I think that she probably would have been fired anyways considering the fact that she got such poor reviews from students and teachers alike.

It DOES make sense - he was simply saying that she did not earn the degree that she paid for.

 

[Fox1789]

work and paly are 2 seperate things..

thats just invading her personal life.. we all know that most people over 21 are eventually gonna get drunk.. hell a lot of ppl underage get drunk.

 

[Knonsense]

The source does say that she was deemed incompetent beforehand. Given the difficulty in firing a teacher these days, I guess I can see why they would dredge up something ridiculous like that picture.

 

[Dechef]

Oh come on, it's just a picture of her as a pirate. Apparently, having a bit of fun is unprofessional. NO FUN FOR YOU WORK HARDER

 

[Brokkr]

If this happened because she was incompetant in the classroom, then that is fine. However, bringing up a picture of her drinking to help strengthen your case is just retarded. What she does legally in her free time should have no bearing on whether or not she becomes a teacher.

 

[Radelaide]

Not even "facepalm" covers this. Are teachers not allowed to have myspace and drink?

"This was not about First Amendment rights, it was about performance, and she clearly did not do what was necessary in order to earn a degree in education," said the university's president, Francine McNairy.

That makes no damn sense.

I don't think that did make sense. How does drinking alcohol equal "not doing what's necessary to earn a degree in education"? This whole story is screwed up. Somone can't be a teacher because they drank once? Are we going to have another prohibition now?

Because she had " poor student and peer reviews questioning her teaching abilities." In other words: "She fucked up and we decided to make up something to fire her upon."

Make sense now?

 

[NeoAC]

If this happened because she was incompetant in the classroom, then that is fine. However, bringing up a picture of her drinking to help strengthen your case is just retarded. What she does legally in her free time should have no bearing on whether or not she becomes a teacher.

I was going to post something on this, but this pretty much sums my view up right there.

 

[Dommyboy]

Bah, you are all clearly missing the point in this article. Racism against pirates! Yargh!