A Pennsylvania high school teacher has been suspended after someone at a bridal party posted pictures on Facebook. One such picture showed the unnamed teacher with a male stripper.
We have been following a disturbing trend of teachers, police officers, and other employees being disciplined or fired for conduct in their personal lives.
In this case, the Brownsville High School teacher merely participated in a pre-wedding ritual for many bridal parties. What is most striking is that she did not post the pictures herself but is being punished for her participation in a completely lawful activity. She will lose 30 days without pay.
Despite the clearly outrageous assault on the rights of association and privacy, Board member Stella Broadwater not only supports the decision but has publicly defended it. Member Nena Kaminsky added her support for the discipline, stating “Everybody has a right to do what they want on their own time, but once kids and parents see it on the Internet, it becomes the school district’s problem.” That is a curious rationale since it was a third party who posted the sexually suggestive picture. Since when did teachers sign on to having their personal lives monitored and governed by parents? That is a “right” that seems dependent on your only exercising it in a way to avoid any third party or observation.
This is an abuse of power that should be opposed by all of the teachers in Brownsville and beyond.
Pinandpuller,
It would be interesting to find out if these pictures were discovered on school district time.
That is interesting. But what difference would this make in a “technically” red neck school district or area of the state?
I skimmed a couple of articles and, yes, “suicide” is the official cause of the census worker’s death. Whether it really was a suicide is another question.
Scott Horton’s article about the Gitmo suicides is worth reading, IMO.
http://harpers.org/archive/2010/01/hbc-90006368
“By dawn, the news had circulated through Camp America that three prisoners had committed suicide by swallowing rags. Colonel Bumgarner called a meeting of the guards, and at 7:00 a.m. at least fifty soldiers and sailors gathered at Camp America’s open-air theater.”
“Bumgarner was known as an eccentric commander. Hickman marveled, for instance, at the colonel’s insistence that his staff line up and salute him, to music selections that included Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and the reggae hit “Bad Boys,” as he entered the command center. This morning, however, Hickman thought Bumgarner seemed unusually nervous and clipped.”
“Bumgarner soon left Guantánamo for a new post in Missouri. He now serves as an ROTC instructor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.”
The final paragraph of Horton’s article:
Not everyone who is involved in this matter views it from a political perspective, of course. General Al-Zahrani grieves for his son, but at the end of a lengthy interview he paused and his thoughts turned elsewhere. “The truth is what matters,” he said. “They practiced every form of torture on my son and on many others as well. What was the result? What facts did they find? They found nothing. They learned nothing. They accomplished nothing.”
Who was it that said, “”The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
It would be interesting to find out if these pictures were discovered on school district time.