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Missouri High School Principal Resigns After Posing As Student On Facebook

Posted by timothy on from the such-poor-use-of-pronouns dept.

longacre writes "Suzy Harriston wanted to be friends on Facebook. The profile said she was from Clayton [Missouri] and had more than 300 friends, many of them from Clayton High School. No one seemed to question who Harriston was. That is, until the night of April 5, when a 2011 grad and former Clayton quarterback posted a public accusation. '"Whoever is friends with Suzy Harriston on Facebook needs to drop them. It is the Clayton Principal," wrote Chase Haslett.' Suzy Harriston quickly disappeared from Facebook, and Louise Losos, the principal, subsequently took a leave of absence, and then resigned."

7 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. This happens more than you think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I know for a fact that stuff like this happened in my old high school in Missouri, but we didn't ever 100% prove it. Whenever the principal would find something that someone had posted on Facebook during school and punish them during the same day, it was pretty obvious.

    1. Re:This happens more than you think by King_TJ · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Exactly... There are definitely times on Facebook where you get a friend request from someone you really don't know, but upon seeing who THEIR friends are (plus, perhaps, checking some of the misc. info they posted about themselves - such as where they attended school), you'd think, "I must actually know this person, and just don't realize it." ... or "My friends must have told them they should talk to me since they think we'd get along for some reason."

      Sure, it's a BAD idea to just randomly friend strangers -- but these situations are usually a little more complicated than that.

    2. Re:This happens more than you think by bentcd · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There is a continuum between public and private. Telling a friend in whispers is not AS public as putting it up on a billboard, for example.

      Odin told us, more than a thousand years ago, all that we are ever going to need to know about this. Verse 63 of Havamal (translation by W H Auden & P B Taylor, http://vta.gamall-steinn.org/havamal.htm):

      It is safe to tell a secret to one,
      Risky to tell it to two,
      To tell it to three is thoughtless folly,
      Everyone else will know.

      --
      sigs are hazardous to your health
  2. Something very similar happened at my school: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I can't prove it, but students in my HS seemed to be punished almost *immediately* from certain FB postings, even postings made during school hours from cell phones, etc.

    Either they had someone monitoring FB full time (doubtful), or there was a "trap" account disguised as a student that people friended by default believing the account was associated with a student at the school.

  3. Losos could be in the shit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If "Suzy Harriston" was indeed a fake profile created by Losos, then she violated a recent Missouri law which went into effect this year which bans teachers from friending students. What's worse, the school district seems to be covering up any attempt to find out if that's the reason why she resigned.

    1. Re:Losos could be in the shit by arth1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If "Suzy Harriston" was indeed a fake profile created by Losos, then she violated a recent Missouri law which went into effect this year which bans teachers from friending students.

      Is a principal considered a teacher here in the US?
      I grew up elsewhere, where the academic staff is separate from general staff, so this is a genuine question.

  4. Re:Look, A Grammar Nazi! Stop Them! by arth1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why do you feel it needs fighting? I really don't think it's critically important to communicate gender with every use of a pronoun.

    I'm not just an old curmudgeon who resists changes because they're changes. When they make the language more precise, I'm all for them. But when a change makes the language less precise, I will fight it.

    I think fighting "singular they" is important because it isn't just using a gender neutral singular, but a plural. This causes ambiguity and misunderstandings.

    Let me give an example:
    "The gang members were restless and their leader was high on drugs."
    Whether the next sentence is "Later that afternoon, he killed Mrs. Jones" or "Later that afternoon, they killed Mrs. Jones" makes a big difference.

    We don't have a "proper" gender-neutral singular pronoun, so we use "they" and "them" instead.

    We have several. We can use "it" about children and animals, even when the gender is known. Then there is "one", which admittedly has a limited use, but it still is not use nearly as often as it could be, and at least the plurality isn't in doubt.

    And "he/him" does double duty as both the male pronoun and the unspecified gender pronoun. No, it's not perfect, and I wish we had a common gender pronoun, but it's still better than using a word that's even more burdened: What we don't have in English are gender specific pronouns for plural. "They/them" does triple duty already. Don't overburden it with singular too. It isn't equipped for the job.

    That the reflective pronoun for "human" is "he" isn't sexism, any more than the reflective pronoun for the Swedish "människa" (human) is "hon" (she).