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Student, Denied Degree For MySpace Photo, Sues
gwoodrow writes "We've all heard the 'fired because of MySpace' stories, where a simple blog or picture gets someone canned. But now one of the targets is fighting back. (The offending picture in this case was a snap from Halloween 2005 of the student in a pirate outfit drinking from a cup.)" From the article: "Teacher in training Stacy Snyder was denied her education degree on the eve of graduation when Millersville University apparently found pictures on her MySpace page 'promoting underage drinking.' As a result, the 27-year-old mother of two had her teaching certificate withheld and was granted an English degree instead. In response, Snyder has filed a Federal lawsuit against the Pennsylvania university asking for her education diploma and certificate along with $75,000 in damages."
But I must be thankful that the new wave of religious moralism has not (yet) arrived here from America... But sadly, I expect it to arrive very soon...
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
There was more. The school district where she was a student teacher was the impetus behind this. The district told the university that if she was awarded a teaching certificate, the district would stop using student teachers from the university. I'm guessing that the university felt it needed the school district for the broader good of its other teaching students. I'm not saying the university was right to not fight the district to the death, but clearly it was a more rational choice. The school district, however...
She was denied the degree she was expecting to get and had worked toward -- I'm not sure why they would change her degree like that, unless the education degree includes the teaching certificate as well. Either way, it's a seemingly arbitrary change by the administration to the outcome of her education that will affect her in her chosen profession.
It's lunacy -- I heard the story a few days ago and figured there must be more to it, but having read more about it now, I don't think there is. Apparently if you have any semblance of an adult life outside school, you're unfit to teach (according to the Morals Police).
Reminds me of the Sprout Goodnight Show host and her firing -- she'd been in some short PSA spoofs about sex SEVEN YEARS before she worked at Sprout (which is a 24-hour PBS Kids network), but parents pressured PBS to fire her and they did so. I guess all that matters is that someone thinks something is bad -- that's now apparently enough to make it true. Here's the Sprout story, by the way. My kid didn't seem to care, but I'm sure others did.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
(1) Arrested in the hospital for public drunkenness and underage drinking after you are taken to the hospital for alcohol poisoning a day before your 21st bday. This actually happened to a friend. I guess that it's far better to let students with alcohol poisoning choke on their own vomit than go to the hospital and risk getting arrested.
(2) Arrested for felony riot for telling a cop who had just hit a fellow student in the face at a Red Cross benefit show that he'd be better off helping clean up NYC after 9/11 than harrassing students who ARE actually trying to help. This actually happened to me a few weeks after 9/11/2001, and fucked with my life for the next few years (difficult to get a job, probation basically required for me to move out of state).
In short; to Hell with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the puritanical prigs who seem to run the government and apparently non-governmental organizations as well.
-b.
You are exactly right. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania placed high standards on our teachers, including requiring them to maintain a certain degree of virtue and decorum in their private lives. In fact, any teacher found committing even a misdemeanor even in a non-public forum can be stripped of their credentials at anytime. Further, the entire text of the article explained that there were some concerns raised by her practicum advisers. The implication being that she wasn't really up to par after all. So, while Millersville University took a harsh approach to this one candidate, I actually applaud their efforts. As little as 20 years ago in Pennsylvania and across the country, Universities maintained the right of "in loco parentis" (sp?). Now, Universities are petrified of ticking a student off and incurring the inevitable litigation. Maybe the pendulum will begin to swing back toward some serious ass-kicking on students. Professors are NOT there to baby sit. Professors do NOT have to "give A's" to everyone. Students are NOT entitled to a degree. Students who work full-time so they can afford a nice car, cheap booze, and loads of pot are going to have serious difficulty maintaining any academic standing. So, go MU, I think you sent a strong message to students. I just hope it doesn't go too far. P.S. Teachers aren't the only individuals expected to maintain social decorum - so are commonwealth employees.
Which leads one to believe that the university was being pressured from the district to do something about her and let them save face. Presumably the district feels they're in a position of enough power (taking on most of their students for their student teaching assignments?) that they could do this.
However, if you look at the response from Conestoga Valley, available on their website here, they state that's untrue, and include some more information not linked in the Washington Post article, including what they claim is the offending Myspace blog post which is not the picture hosted by thesmokinggun.com which the WP article links to. It could be a little damning towards her if you believe the district that she was actively encouraging the kids to go to her Myspace page, but then, not knowing what her page is (I would imagine by now it's either been deleted or locked down anyway) it'd be hard to say whether the content therein is really unacceptable for the students to see.
One quote from their response troubles me to some degree though, from her cooperating teacher, Nicole Reinking:
Certainly that can be taken any number of ways, some good, some bad, but taking it simply at face value, it saddens me to see where education has gone these days. Growing up in rural Maine (not that there's really any other kind of Maine
Regardless, in the end I'm a little surprised and frightened that a university feels they have the ability to do this. That after someone has paid them tens of thousands of dollars for their education, and has presumably satisfactorily completed the academic requirements, they can one day before graduation tell you "Yeah, we're not going to give you the degree you wanted, have this English degree instead." What's to keep them from doing that to someone else because they don't like brunettes or people from Alaska? (Don't answer that, I know it's a stupid question.
You can correct the relative population growth rate by increasing reproduction rates of the non-religious, OR by increasing the death rate of the religious.
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So I guess it's not such a bad thing that red-staters are the first to volunteer for wars
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Check out http://www.vhemt.org/ for some thoughts about a future without children.
c++;
c++;
What's to say that this isn't water? Are teaching students supposed to swear off all liquids? Even assuming it is 120 proof grain alcohol, does that school have a rule against adult students drinking?
I keep thinking that Rod Serling is going to step out from behind a door and say, "A quiet campus in a quiet town becomes the stage for tragedy when teetotalers go on a witch hunt, in the Twilight Zone."
-- QED
> In the USA, I wonder if a teacher can say something which is scientifically true
> but socially/politically-incorrect, like stating that moderate consumption of alcohol
> is actually healthy.
In certain parts of the USA, teachers may not even teach the theory of evolution, or that the earth is more than 6,000 years old!
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?