"Drunken Pirate" Denied Teaching Certificate

[orichalcum]

A 27-year-old woman has been denied a teaching certificate from the Millerville University of PA, after passing all her courses, because the program administrators found her MySpace page in which she posted a photo of herself, fully clothed, wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a "Mr. Goodbar" plastic cup. According to them, she failed in "professionalism" for promoting underage drinking, despite being 25 herself at the time of the photo.

She's suing. I hope she gets a whole chest full of doubloons from them. And once again, be careful what you put up on the Net, I guess...

Comments

[mmeubiquitous.livejournal.com]

That's ridiculous.

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

Yep. Professional is how you behave _on the job_, not whether or not you happen to drink beer at a Halloween party.

silly goons

[jab2.livejournal.com]

i think pretty soon there's going to have to be law about how universally accessible media is allowed to be used to regulate internally to a job or a school. For example, there are campus police departments that use Facebook pics to issue underage drinking citations. Seems legally sketchy to me, though logically valid.

As for her, well, by that reasoning, no parents of children under 21 should ever drink a cocktail or have wine at dinner, because that is modeling drinking. (and for that matter, my parents should never have let me be the family bartender throughout high school, even though the practical result was that I could tell scotch, vodka, and gin apart by smell by age 14 but didn't taste them until I was 21...)

[a-dodecahedron.livejournal.com]

I had no idea the administrators from the 19th century were still enforcing the Rules for Purity and Uprightness of Schoolteachers.

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

And they have to be virgins, too! Until they get married and retire from teaching, of course.

[holmes-iv.livejournal.com]

Well, this one was presumably already on a short rope, since she's either a fallen woman or a failed wife—it wasn't specified which in the article. She should have had her mind on higher things, really (choosing her nunnery, for instance).

[a-dodecahedron.livejournal.com]

Yes! And no wearing of attractive clothing, either.