Social Network Profile Costs Woman College Degree
Forget losing your job, apparently your MySpace or Facebook profile and photos can now cause you to lose your degree. In what may be one of the most frightening rulings regarding social networks and privacy to date, a federal judge has ruled against a former student of Millersville University of Pennsylvania who was denied her college degree because of an unseemly online photo and its accompanying caption found on her social network profile.
The Case of "Drunken Pirate," Stacy Snyder
The woman, Stacy Snyder, sued Millersville in 2007. Snyder was student-teaching at a high school, but had received poor evaluations regarding her professionalism in the classroom. Before her semester-long teaching assignment was up, she was barred from campus. However, it was not the negative reviews that caused her to be barred nor were they responsible for the loss of her degree. It was a MySpace photo.
In the photo, Synder was posed standing with a cocktail. The caption read "drunken pirate." It was accompanied by a note which made reference to her supervising teacher. That led to the school's decision to end her assignment, which in turn meant she now no longer qualified for her bachelor's degree in education.
Instead, the university reclassified some academic credits and gave Synder a degree in English. She appealed the decision and lost. She then decided to sue. The judge, Paul S. Diamond of the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, dismissed her free-speech claims, saying that employees' free speech is only protected if it relates to matters of public concern. Synder's criticism of her supervisor did not.
University president, Francine McNairy, agreed with the decision. "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," she said.
Was The Photo Really To Blame?
Given Synder's history in this case, the photo of her drinking and the accompanying note may not be really to blame for her lack of degree. In a way, they were just the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. If Synder had been a good employee (student teacher) up until the point the photo had been discovered, she probably would have been disciplined, but not let go, and thus would not not have lost her degree.
However, given her prior negative reviews, the photo simply gave the school an excuse for what they wanted to do all along - fire Stacy Synder. It was tangible evidence of her unprofessionalism in a way that subjective performance reviews are not. She may have been able to argue with the university that her supervisor had a personal problem with her, or something of the like, had her negative reviews come up in a decision regarding her degree. A photo is not as easy to explain away.
Lesson Learned: Use Privacy Controls On Your Social Network Profile
Synder's real mistake in this situation was not knowing or choosing to turn on any sort of privacy controls on her social network profile page. Given that the photo was found on her MySpace profile, it could have easily been kept out of sight from her supervisors and administrators at the university. It never needed to come into play.
MySpace profiles can easily be set to "private" which would have prevented anyone except those who were accepted as Synder's friends to have access to the items she posted. Facebook also offers extensive privacy controls that should be configured, especially if your profile is being used for more business networking type purposes.
Don't Be So Quick To Criticize
Although it may be easy to criticize Synder based on the information we've learned so far - negative performance reviews, distasteful photos - the truth is that many younger teachers disagree with their their older supervisors, which could have led to the bad reviews.
In fact, if you take the time to review the judge's decision (PDF), you'll see that Synder's "unprofessionalism" that was cited in those reviews came from accusations that she exhibited "over-familiarity with her students," and "had difficulty maintaining a formal teaching manner." Really? A college student teaching a high school class? Shocking. In addition, it seems that students knew of her MySpace page and checked it regularly, another unseemly violation of a teacher's ethical code, in the eyes of her supervisor.
Ironically, one of Synder's MySpace postings in question 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.
MySpace Lost Synder Her Degree
Synder may have needed more coaching in how to be a professional - the very thing that student-teaching is designed for - but it hardly negates her years of completed course work towards her education degree. So in the end, it really was her MySpace mistake that lost her the degree after all. And if that isn't a tale that has you rushing out to manage your profile page's privacy settings right now, then it's hard to imagine what will.
Image Credits: Computer Eye, Mikey G. Ottowa; privacy please, bejealousofme, Oihan, SVG Creations
Comments
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It is the prigish outdated "high moral standard" of her employers which is problematic, whereby other people are expected to hold up to the "moral standards" they have not been able to maintain themselves.
Parents fearful that their no-longer virgin teenager may see the teacher in a photo without her wearing long sleevs and a long dress while drinking a glass of milk.
I agree this is more of a disiplinary issue and shouldn't be reduced to the link-baiting title of the article.
Posted by: John Smith | December 5, 2008 7:03 AM
career survival is getting to those who survive are the most paranoid.
They follow the rules like a mindless robot.They simply do NOTHING that could be misunderstood or could be misinterpreted. You adapt to the the corporate political norms. You always ask 'could THIS get me fired?'
You are totally respectful and agree with superiors. You are very careful what you say to anyone. You do nothing in your private life that could be traced during background checks.
This is a form of social Darwinism that suck out all the creative and innovative people from the companies - so all that is left is the mindless masses who just get through the day without saying or doing anything that could stand out or be noticed in any way.
Posted by: AD Public Relations
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December 5, 2008 7:05 AM
Mentioning a supervising teacher or effectively a boss was the main mistake I can see.
The sad thing is that these cases will vanish once the generation that grew up with social networking gets into more management positions.
Hopefully by then, we'll all have the understanding that publicly criticizing the institution you are at is going to result in punishment, but we'll also accept that the odd photo of someone drunk at a party etc is just an odd photo and nothing more.
Posted by: Dan Thornton | December 5, 2008 7:06 AM
While Stacy's case seems pretty extreme, I know someone who is no longer welcome to teach at a local high school because a select group of parents found a myspace profile of the person and didn't deem some of the pictures appropriate (an alcoholic beverage in hand). The parents then threatened the director of the program, saying they would go to the principal and school board with the matter unless the director did something about it. Needless to say, the person was no longer allowed to help out with the program anymore.
It seems that with education these days, you have to tiptoe around everything because others have crossed the ethical line all too often.
Posted by: Marie Goltara | December 5, 2008 7:19 AM
The tone of this post is absolutely correct.
There is no room for an expectation of conduct standards amongst educators. For that matter we should eliminate conduct expectations for all professions, shouldn't we? I find that, in general, people are remarkably adept at drawing a strong line between personal and professional ethics.
Furthermore, I very much look forward to a time when our young generation can completely eliminate any expectation for appropriate discretion or professionalism in the workplace.
Only when our educators, judges, attorneys, physicians, psychologists, therapists, and politicians are free to behave - both publicly and virtually - as they see fit, will these professions be truly capable of leading our society to a role of leadership in the global community.
Posted by: Geoff | December 5, 2008 7:43 AM
Less then 1 month ago today, I walked away from a corporate life. If you decide to work, for anyone, be sure to keep your social networking profiles either private or limited. Keeping all your off work life open to the scrutiny of your employer can be very damaging; as this story proves.
Posted by: ThriveBlogger | December 5, 2008 7:54 AM
This is a rather pathetic line in the post, in reference to the student not being able to maintain a formal teaching manner:
"Really? A college student teaching a high school class? Shocking."
Let's quickly pass by the puerile attempt at sarcasm, and deal with the substance. Someone undergoes formal training in a live environment (e.g. not simulated or role played). They are unable to maintain a formal approach to a formal exercise where the very most important thing is the way you carry yourself. This is called failure. She got a degree anyway - what is she complaining about, exactly?
I very much doubt the author waited until she passed 21 years of age before she expected to be treated like an adult. Yet apparently it is an excuse to not be judged as one. What a wonderful double standard. Personally, I prefer my professionals to take their training seriously.
Posted by: Jon | December 5, 2008 9:30 AM
This is a rather pathetic line in the post, in reference to the student not being able to maintain a formal teaching manner:
"Really? A college student teaching a high school class? Shocking."
Let's quickly pass by the puerile attempt at sarcasm, and deal with the substance. Someone undergoes formal training in a live environment (e.g. not simulated or role played). They are unable to maintain a formal approach to a formal exercise where the very most important thing is the way you carry yourself. This is called failure. She got a degree anyway - what is she complaining about, exactly?
I very much doubt the author waited until she passed 21 years of age before she expected to be treated like an adult. Yet apparently it is an excuse to not be judged as one. What a wonderful double standard. Personally, I prefer my professionals to take their training seriously.
Posted by: Jon | December 5, 2008 9:30 AM
Terrific analysis, Sarah.
I'd disagree with your final conclusion, though. It wasn't MySpace that was the cause of Snyder losing her degree.
It seems to me from reading your post that a range of behaviours got Snyder into trouble, and the photo posted on her MySpace profile was the final straw (as you noted).
Therefore behaviour that contradicted what those in authority expected (no matter what anyone might think of that) is the cause of Snyder's predicament, not MySpace.
Another example of such predicaments is Facebook and the Virgin Atlantic cabin crew fired en masse recently for what they did in Facebook.
It wasn't Facebook that was the cause of their predicament, it was their behaviour.
Posted by: Neville Hobson | December 5, 2008 9:32 AM
It sounds like this news story is basically written to slant and stir up. What really happened: she failed one of her classes.... However, this news story is trying to play it that "she lost her degree".
a) she takes the class again and passes
or b) she completes the class at another college.
Posted by: Doubledown Tandino | December 5, 2008 10:52 AM
To be honest I am, like many college students, guilty of having those same type of photos on my social networks. Unlike this young lady, most college students entering the workforce have a sense of resposibility and commonsense. It is known that employers access those type social forums just to see what your person life is like and how you may reflect their company. And Mrs. Synder was not only a liability of the university, but also to the school she interned for. But the dumbest thing this young lady did, was post comments about her supervisioner under the photo. What in the world was she thinking?!? It's one thing to talk negatively about your boss in private, but to make comments in a way that everyone in the world can view makes no sense. This is not even a careless action, it is just plan STUPID.
Posted by: Reginald D. Hampton | December 5, 2008 12:01 PM
OMG..i can see getting fired, but, losing your degree..a degree that i am certain she worked hard for and PAID for. That is insane.
I am not approving of her behavior..but really? is that even legal?
wow
eye opener
Mega Star Media INC
www.megastarmedia.com
Social Networking Software
Posted by: Social Networking Software | December 5, 2008 12:41 PM
To her defense - A photo is conclusive of nothing, and has not been since the advent of digital photo editing. It could be a pose, an ironic, sarcastic inside-joke between friends, a photoshop job. Let's be scientific here. This a hypothesis; it can't even qualify as evidence without assumptions.
To her detriment - why not put your best foot forward online if you are able?
So next time you see that one of your employees has a picture on Facebook of themselves passed-out drunk, next to a keg, on the floor of frat house.
He could be a non-drinker, artist, and photographer who is taking a photo of himself for art class project, titled "contemporary college culture."
Posted by: Paul | December 5, 2008 12:43 PM
Would this have been any different if she'd put this picture in a newspaper advertisement? No.
Would this be any different if she were studying for any other degree that required a practicum and insulted her boss publicly? No.
She exhibited unprofessional behavior, first in the school then she insulted her supervisor outside of the school.
She's paying the price.
At least she has an 4-year degree. If she doesn't get blacklisted she'll be able to go through an alternative-certification program or master-degree program later. In the meantime, she can teach at a private school, if they will have her.
Of course, with her name all over the newspapers for this, she'll have a really hard time getting a job working with children in the near future.
Posted by: davidwr | December 5, 2008 3:16 PM
She had a nice anus!
I was in it only last week. My splooge is still there.
Posted by: Ibod Catooga | December 5, 2008 5:23 PM
She obviously didn't exercise the discretion she should have. And the university wasn't nurturing or lenient in how this matter was handled. However, the woman was awarded a degree though her profile wasn't responsible for it not being the one she wanted.
Posted by: Dave Zatz | December 5, 2008 7:57 PM
Dave, the point is that she shouldn't HAVE to exercise 'discretion'. People should be able to say whatever they want about the boss in question, unless they are lying about the boss.
If they are.... then the boss can take them to court with a slander suit, and get his 'day in court' that way and force the person in question to make an apology.
It is simply PAST TIME to realize that 'discretion' is really code for "Don't say anything that criticizes me, or you will be fired!" We should NOT have that in a free society, and the judge made a boneheaded and braindead ruling, that he should lose his judgeship for.
Posted by: Christopher | December 5, 2008 8:14 PM
The solution is not privacy. Privacy was a temporary historical accident. When we lived in small villages, everybody knew what everybody else was doing. We just live in a bigger village now.
The solution is integrity. It's about time people learned once again to be the same when they are alone, as when every deed is known.
Posted by: Mike Abundo
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December 5, 2008 8:57 PM
I agree with the newspaper analogy. If you wouldn't post something in the local classifieds with your name attached, why would you do it on MySpace? The fact is, we don't live private lives online. Everything you post is fodder for people making judgments about you. If you post something about your boss, and they don't like it, they can fire you. That kind of online gossip can undermine the morale in the workforce, and people who do it are malcontents any company is better off without.
As for this young lady, it's a tough lesson, but one hopefully she'll learn rather than complaining that it's not fair. Kids these days need to learn that LIFE ain't fair. And the internet doesn't hide any secrets. Post at your own peril.
Posted by: mary | December 5, 2008 9:06 PM
Wow, a lesson to us all that use social networking sites. The rules have changed, we are living in the 21st century!
Now that our private details and lives can be blasted around the world at a press of a button should we all not be more careful how we present ourselves in the public domain?
Posted by: June Cook | December 6, 2008 5:08 AM
There are people out there, people who pride themselves on good judgment, discretion and overall professionalism, who jump to conclusions. These people would decide, *before* reading past the headline of this post, that the woman was guilty of such bad judgment she should be punished at any arbitrary cost. It may be a puritan influence, it may be simple insecurity: "I feel better about myself when I judge others harshly."
Shouldn't it be OK to appear in public in a way that shows you are, at the moment, prioritizing some value (fun, joy, humor, relaxation, etc.) at the slight expense of other values?
We have our second President in a row to have abused pot and coke. I think what this woman got caught doing falls well short of that. A knee-jerk reaction against her can go too far.
Posted by: Steven Michael Malloy | December 6, 2008 5:57 AM
The Darwin Awards have been around for a while, but perhaps it's time they included a special category for idiots who do us all a favor by committing "social networking suicide".
Posted by: Sven Gali | December 6, 2008 6:19 AM
"Instead, the university reclassified some academic credits and gave Synder a degree in English."
Man, that has to be worth less than no degree at all...
Posted by: Jonathan Scholten | December 6, 2008 6:34 AM
If this were the first one of these stories ever, I might at least have a little sympathy. But let's face it, in the years since blogs became big we've had a stream of stories like this: person in a position to affect dumbass' life finds something stupid that dumbass posted on his blog / site and there were consequences.
Whether it's fair or not is no longer the issue. The point is that these things happen and I have yet to hear of such a case ever being overturned. The "I have a right to be a dumbass" defense apparently doesn't play in court.
And, by the way, in case anyone was unaware of it, life just isn't fair all the time. The interaction between Social Networking and the workplace is but one of thousands of examples of this.
So, you have a choice. You can boldly exercise your right to free speech and hope that your employer, school, etc. won't exercise theirs in response. If they do, hopefully the satisfaction of your belief that you were right and they were wrong will keep you warm at night. Or you can learn to exercise discretion and have some success in the workplace. And no, discretion is not code for don't criticize. It is code for choose carefully what battles you will fight and how you will fight them.
As someone else has noted, her main error was in being incredibly stupid. I'm not terribly saddened to learn that she won't be molding young minds in the near future.
Posted by: Brian | December 6, 2008 6:52 AM
1. Don't be a dumb ass.
2. Don't publicize your dumb assitude on the net.
Posted by: Pickle | December 6, 2008 1:04 PM
Q: What is dumber than MySpace, Facebook, et al?
A: Posting to them.
Posted by: Hex | December 6, 2008 6:57 PM
How strange, when most of my college years were spent with all of us students drinking a friendly keg or two with our professors. I'm sure there's plenty of photos. Can't imagine any of us getting in trouble for that. How prudish!
Now, that one time with the ping pong balls at my school, word got round, things got out of hand, and yes, I think jobs were lost!
Posted by: Liz | December 7, 2008 12:49 AM
The lesson here isn't "use your privacy controls." The lesson here is "don't put stupid stuff out on the Internet that's going to get your ass fired and embarrassed."
You never know when one of your social network "friends" who can see your photos will pass it along to someone who will do you damage.
Posted by: Danny Sanchez | December 7, 2008 5:15 AM
that penalty is highly inhumane, it is not applicable to a very well develop country to act like that.
http://www.universityloveconnection.com/
Posted by: college dating | December 8, 2008 1:19 AM
How many stories like this will it take for students/young professionals to get the clue about privacy controls? I first read about this issue in an editorial published in my college's student newspaper over a year ago. Since then, the editorials have become news stories - and there have seemingly been hundreds of them. Some say that not reading newspapers (online or in print) damages your ability to keep up with current events, but cases like this show that not reading such publications (you can even throw respectable blogs like this one into the mix) damages your ability to use common sense.
For those who have read the stories, this is a simple case of failure to use common sense. For Snyder, she never knew the sense was so common... until now.
Peter Simones
http://www.Cramster.com
Posted by: Peter Simones | December 8, 2008 1:50 PM
This post does not correctly convey the facts. The myspace photo had nothing to do with this woman not receiving her teaching certification. Have you seen the photo, it conveys nothing. She still received a degree. Part of the degree was the student teaching though, and she failed that part. She created an unprofessional relationship with her students. Why should the standard be lowered for her? The University has a responsibility to train good teachers, if they lower their expectations that puts their reputation and the future jobs of its graduates who met the program's requirements, in jeopardy. This girl thought she had a case amidst the myspace and facebook explosion and tried to exploit it. She lost because she had no case.
Posted by: MH | December 9, 2008 5:52 AM
re: "Dave, the point is that she shouldn't HAVE to exercise 'discretion'. People should be able to say whatever they want about the boss in question, unless they are lying about the boss."
re: "that penalty is highly inhumane, it is not applicable to a very well develop country to act like that."
One of the biggest problems in our society is lack of accountability--"it's not my fault!" It's never the person's fault, someone else is always to blame. Sorry, not true. This girl used poor judgment in posting a picture and allowing her students to whom she is supposed to be a positive moral role model to see it. She made negative comments about authority when she is supposed to role model proper responses to authority. "My kid couldn't have done that...my kid never gets in trouble!" Heard that before? Sure. From the parents whose kids were just arrested for some horrible crime--from a house where there was no discipline or respect for others.
She should have been aware of the standard. It was her job to know it. She blew it. She is paying the price, as she should. Welcome to adulthood. You are now responsible for your actions.
Posted by: Jeff | December 9, 2008 9:52 PM
Excellent post and I to must agree with #28. It's often common sense that prevails (in theory) I was concerned about this comment however?
another unseemly violation of a teacher's ethical code
lets say hypothetically that I know some teachers who communicate with both their current and former students via a social media tool hypothetically again Facebook.
Do you think that could be a potential problem ethically if the dialogue is all friendly?
Posted by: Robert "Butch" Greenawalt | December 16, 2008 7:50 AM