Vulgar Comment On Newspaper Site Costs Man His Job 643
DeeFresh writes "ReadWriteWeb has an article up today discussing an incident in which a school employee lost his job after leaving a comment on the website of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper. After the school employee responded to the newspaper's poll of 'the strangest thing you've ever eaten' with a feline-inspired vulgarity, Kurt Greenbaum, the site's director of social media, tracked down the commenter's identity through his IP address and reported him to school officials. When confronted, the school employee resigned from his job."
first Pussy? (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet Greenbaum seems to show no remorse...
Asshole.
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Kurt Greenbaum, you are stupid, puritanical scum (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that, but he's a fucking hypocrite. He called this guy's employer up with the goal of having him fired, and when cornered over the issue said:
"Yeah, you caught me! I made him log on to his computer at work, visit STLtoday.com's Talk of the Day, read the item, type a vulgarity and hit the "submit" key.
Interesting perspective. Thanks for your contribution.
Oh, I didn't say he was fired. I said he resigned.
"A vulgarity"? You mean the word pussy? OMFG WHAT WOULD JESUS THINK IF HE SAW THAT WORD? Guess what? People have sex.
P.S. Forced to resign is much the same thing as being fired, especially since in this day and age he could probably have been sued for sexual harassment over such a comment, thus completely ending any future employability.
Using the word 'pussy' on school time is simply not that bad. Of course, I can't attach these comments to the article itself, because comments are disabled there now even though the story is only three days old. Perhaps that's because most of the comments go something like this:
YOU are the director of social media? tools to be leveraged to get businesses closer to their customers?
what an awful story and it's even more embarassing that you squawk about it after the fact.
Kurt Greenbaum is scum, and I will do my best to avoid their website in the future.
No place for this kind of crap in America. (Score:4, Insightful)
Kurt Greenbaum should be ashamed. There is no place whatsoever for that kind of behavior in America.
Somebody simply wanted to freely express himself, and Kurt interfered. Absolutely pathetic.
I see a lot of weak people here in the story... (Score:5, Insightful)
OTOH, why the heck did the teacher resign at first being contacted? I wonder how much more there is to the story than we're seeing.
Lesson learned: When making anonymous posts, use either a proxy, an anonymous posting service (COTSE.NET), someone's open WiFi connection, or a friend's computer.
He resigned (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not fair that they tracked him down, but if he resigned then he gave up without a fight.
Re:Kurt Greenbaum, you are stupid, puritanical scu (Score:3, Insightful)
He didn't know it was an employer but probably thought that maybe some student. Still an asshole and idiotic thing to do tho.
Re:He resigned (Score:3, Insightful)
Some resignations are without incident; but a fair few, particularly in the immediate vicinity of unpleasant happenings, are basically firings by other means. In particular, given that teachers can often be pretty hard to fire because of union issues, it wouldn't wholly surprise me if(either because they are puritans, or because they already wanted to get rid of the guy for other reasons) admin informed him that he could either resign quietly, or resign himself to having the remainder of his tenure be one long march through hell in absolutely every legal way available to them.
"We reserve the right" (Score:5, Insightful)
We reserve the right in our sole discretion, but do not assume any obligation, to refuse to post, remove, or edit any messages or postings sent to the Site.
We reserve the right to suspend or terminate your access to and use of this Site if, in our view, your conduct fails to meet any of our guidelines. We also reserve the right to change these terms at any time.
Well, fire Greenbaum. STLtoday.com didn't reserve the right for him to track people down and harass them through their employer, nor did he use the agreed upon remedies outlined in the terms of service. I guess even the editors don't read those things.
Eating a pussy is cool, but eating pussy is not? (Score:5, Insightful)
Still on the site is the story of how some guy killed and ate a cat (is that even legal?), but that is ofc fine, however the guy posting an innuendo obviously went too far!
Re:He got it coming (Score:1, Insightful)
I agree. This would've been an injustice if he posted that from home and this happened. But, being on the clock and aggravated by the nature of his employer, he had it coming.
Re:He got it coming (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah; I don't need to sully any of that. He resigned (we obviously do not have all of the information, because I honestly doubt that the conversation went "you said pussy twice!" and the guy went "GAH oh noes I quit! D:") because "concerned citizen" noticed that this was coming from a local school IP address. Now, this could have two variations: if it was an elementary school, it would seem strange. If it was either a middle or high school, well, it could have easily been from any student who felt like trolling.
So, Mr. concerned citizen forwarded a message along the lines of "this e-mail address from your IP address said "pussy" twice on my website". If it had been any student e-mail, that would be the end of it because the teachers just do not have student e-mail addresses on file (usually). If it had been the headmasters e-mail address, Mr. concerned citizen would have been duly ignored.
And then Mr. concerned citizen writes an article celebrating his ability to turn someone in for saying "pussy" twice. It's slightly difficult (and disturbing) to believe that Mr. concerned citizen had the local school IP address memorized to the point where a brief glance at the e-mail alert tipped him off that this was a serious issue.
It will be a delight to see if this becomes a normal thing. You know, adults posting on a not-child oriented website and being punished for using naughty words. I'm sure the teacher wasn't on a lunch break, or wasn't waiting for 1200 copies to print, or wasn't waiting for his students to finish a test, etc. Almost as atrocious as someone replying to slashdot on the clock, with their employers computer assets.
But maybe I just find the idea of being tracked to your job by a hypersensitive journalist a little off putting. Suppose he decides that he should moderate out disagreeable posts? He's well within his rights to do so, as a moderator.
I just find it ridiculous that the adults have greater difficulty coping with foul language than the kids. Seriously, it's a word. Delete it and warn him if you really feel threatened by it; you don't contact the organization it came from. How comical it would have been if he had called them instead..."Hello Mr. Rumples, I have a serious issue to address. You see, someone from within your school said pussy....twice. On the internet."
Re:Pussy. There, I said it. (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree. This isn't some Orwell-inspired conspiracy to silence freedom of expression, this is a valid objection to the use of equipment in an educational institution being used inappropriately. Yes, censorship and coalescing of power in the hands of the government/corporate complex is a huge problem faced by the general population of western nations, but lets identify the problem rather than burning down the house to kill the termites. I don't agree with the idea that social taboo as a means of behavioral regulation is a bad thing. Telling teachers to behave in a manner that highlights to children how we would like the future generation to conduct themselves is not OMG CENSORSHIP, it's the process by which tribal savages become productive farmers, who become orderly towns people who become civilized nations. Take a walk out to the streets in a large city these days, and the behavior you'll see makes the marauding Vikings look positively gentlemanly.
The outcry about this really highlights in my mind the fact that society today has decided that finding common morality is a bit too hard to bother, and apathetically defaulted to a state of total moral disintegration. It's not censorship to think that civilized people should act, well, civilized. To all of you who think that it's some kind of social repression to frown upon people who make a habbit of unashamedly expressing themselves in a vulgar and crass manner, I suggest you go see the movie Idiocracy, because it's about YOU.
Re:He got it coming (Score:5, Insightful)
"Now I can't way to see the juvenile posters making this a case of libertarian freedom of speech"
- And who can blame them after your juvenile post blathering about "being on the clock". Jeez, wake up and realize that nitpicking about being on the clock was never the point of this discussion. The point was why the hell was that asshole tracking commenters down? What kind of a dickhead reports someone for posting on the very message board that he left open for comments?
Don't want comments, shut down that functionality. If you do want comments either moderate them or just deal with a few vulgar posts. And whatever you do, don't post the question "what is the grossest thing you've ever eaten" and not be smart enough to see the comments that are coming your way.
While the posts were a bit juvenile and the guy shouldn't have done it during school hours, they aren't noteworthy enough to cost a person his job. The most juvenile act in this story was the vindictive way the guy was hunted down. Sorry, but put it in perspective and realize it's just one little word.
Re:He got it coming (Score:5, Insightful)
It is also worth noting that the school didn't fire him, but that he quit on the spot... or so says the story, but that's irrelevant anyways. The guy had it coming.
Ok, we're all agreed the guy was an idiot idiot for posting at all. But he 'had it coming?' Really? Suppose instead he'd made two posts to slashdot in that time - a clear misuse of school property - would he deserve to lose his job then? What if he'd posted and reposted a critique on some sort of scientology blog - would he deserve to lose his job then? It seems to me that the reason this guy lost his job is because he violated the ridiculous community morals of a small town, not because of anything to do with misuse of school resources.
At one point in my life I seriously considered becoming a teacher, but I realized that doing so would likely place me at the mercy of the sorts of unthinking bigoted responses we're seeing here. This attitude is at least part of the reason our public education system is failing - the work environment is so unpleasant that (with the exception of a few saints) no one with another option for a career would do it. Would you really want to work beside people who are so shocked by a couple one word internet posts that you can't work with them anymore?
Re:Might sound harsh (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with working in education is that your right to free speech is almost non-existant.
Say something that some jumped up "think of the children" zealot doesn't like, and you end up having your right to be in the presence of "impressionable children" questioned. While they're questioning, you frequently end up not being allowed to do your job "just in case".
With the option of quietly quitting, having all the hassle, but being able to get a place elsewhere, or having your name plastered across the media (news outlets just LOVE to play with this kind of story) and never being able to work in the profession again, you know what's on the cards as soon as this comes up. It's a hard and gruelling task, to go through those inquisitions.
Re:No place for this kind of crap in America. (Score:3, Insightful)
Would you allow an anonymous poster to spam the Disney website with vulgarity under the umbrella disguise of free speech?
Fixed that for you. We don't jump to conclusions about people or their motives around here (well, I don't).
Feel free to block the person's IP, but unless illegal activities are suspected, tracking down the culprit is absolutely unjustified.
Re:TOR (Score:2, Insightful)
If I'm the principal of the school whose employee is using school assets to post sexual vulgarities on the Web, my job is in danger. I'm one flash mob away from being the lead story on the local evening news or the O'Reilly Report, and no amount of union tenure is going to save my ass, or the asses of my family whose mouths I'm charged to feed.
Once the activity became public knowledge, there is only one way this could end.
Should this Kurt guy have blown the whistle, or kept his mouth shut? Dunno. Depends on how you feel about whistle-blowers. Maybe he has kids in that school...
Or the school did. (Score:2, Insightful)
The school’s IT director took a shine to the challenge. Long story short: Using the time-frame of the comments, our website location and the IP addresses in the WordPress e-mail, he tracked it back to a specific computer. The headmaster confronted the employee, who resigned on the spot.
Why do people assume the teacher quit because he thought he'd get fired? If I had a boss come to me at the end of the day and say the IT department has spent all day stalking someone who anonymously used the word "p*ssy" as a joke about eating and now it's been discovered that I am the culprit with any kind of incriminating tone I would quit too.
Re:What? (Score:1, Insightful)
Twice.
He probably thought it didn't get through the first time.
Re:Puritannical? (Score:5, Insightful)
He only posted the comment twice... Have you ever posted a comment and not seen it appear, only to think that the request never went through and subsequently reposted the comment?
Re:Kurt Greenbaum, you are stupid, puritanical scu (Score:3, Insightful)
>"A vulgarity"? You mean the word pussy? OMFG WHAT WOULD JESUS THINK IF HE SAW THAT WORD? Guess what? People have sex.
Not in the US they don't. Decent people have their babies delivered by Fedex. Only European heathens have sex.
Pervert.
Re:Kurt Greenbaum, you are stupid, puritanical scu (Score:5, Insightful)
We will not share individual user information with third parties unless the user has specifically approved the release of that information.
"Freedom of Speech" on the Internet (Score:5, Insightful)
In America at least, you cannot be arrested for saying something stupid or even treasonous on the Internet. But that's it. That is the sum total of your protection. You can't be arrested, that's all there is to it. You CAN lose your job, lose any prospect for meaningful employment, lose your wife, lose the respect of your family, friends, and co-workers.
Never write anything anywhere on the Internet, "anonymously" or not, that you would not want your wife, boss, friends, or children to read. Period. It's not difficult to understand, yet we continually find ourselves trying to defend these losers as if they are some kind of free speech champions. They're not martyrs, they're morons. Giving these guys an Anonymous Login is like giving them a bottle of Tequila. Sure, it's their right, but you hope they have enough self-awareness to know how stupid and ugly they appear after they indulge.
Re:Surely informing the school runs against (Score:1, Insightful)
I dunno - it's like contacting the telephone company and providing someone's telephone number. You know they know who it belongs to.
Under privacy laws such as the DPA, UK, IP addresses are a bit of a gray area, since IP addresses on their own do not qualify as 'personal data' (and certainly not 'sensitive personal data'). But I believe it's been acknowledged that IP addresses in conjunction with other information may qualify as 'personal data'. Not sure how this would work in the US (under HIPAA, GLBA etc).
Re:Pussy. There, I said it. (Score:2, Insightful)
To all of you who think that it's some kind of social repression to frown upon people who make a habbit of unashamedly expressing themselves in a vulgar and crass manner, I suggest you go see the movie Idiocracy, because it's about YOU.
Bull fucking shit. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.
Vulgarity is just another means of expressing dissatisfaction. An insult written in obscenities is no worse than one written in flowery language, frequently its a lot better because it gets to the point that much quicker.
Re:TOR (Score:1, Insightful)
From TFA: [stltoday.com]
"Then there's Rocky Mountain oysters. They're good, too. Fans of a certain Illinois festival know what I'm talking about. 'Nuf said."
I'm not worried about some teacher who's eaten pussy. Lotta people eat pussy.
I'm worried about the fact that Kurt Greenbaum's eaten balls. And liked it. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But even Mr. T. had his limits back in the "Mr. T Ate My Balls" meme. The balls that Mr. T ate were always human balls, but Kurt Greenbaum doesn't eat human balls. He eats the balls of animals. And he says so right there in his own article.
Using your employer's time to violate your employer's privacy policy to ruin the career of a guy whose only offence was to make a wisecrack about eating pussy is bad enough. But doing it after just having used your employer's website to tell the entire world that you've eaten bovine testicles turns your poor judgement into hypocrisy of the highest order. Mr. Greenbaum, you can eat all the balls you want on your own time. But keep that kind of smut off your employer's website. There are children reading, for fuck's sake :)
Re:"Freedom of Speech" on the Internet (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay first off "pussy" is a word. Nothing more. No more offensive than saying "vagina" or "penis". Stop being so sensitive Americans.
Second in a truly FREE country you should be able to do whatever you want *outside of work*, and not be fired for it. Just last week we read a story about a guy who was fired *on mere suspicion* of downloading child porn (and later proved to be innocent). That's just not right. Companies should not be able to fire people for non-work-related things.
I'd sue this school for unjustified dismissal. Even if I eventually lose the case, it's worthwhile purely as a form of revenge (wasting the time of the principal and hopefully scaring him). I learned that tactic from RIAA. Also last week's Medium episode.
Re:What? (Score:2, Insightful)
Most likely, IMHO, after deleting the post a second time, the moderator was in the process of blocking the poster's IP address, and did a routine reverse DNS check to see where the IP was. That check pulled up an extension ".edu".
Then, and only then, his concerned parent mind kicked in, and now armed with the knowledge that there was a person posting vulgarities from a school computer during school hours, and he had make a moral decision whether to ignore it or do something about it. He decided to do something about it once he knew it was coming from a school.
Now can I prove this is how it went down? No, but it sure seems more logical that this guy going on a witchhunt of anyone who says something bad on his boards.
FLIP SIDE: Alternate reality where he decides to do nothing... one week later an individual in a trusted position commits horrible [sexual] crime, and the resulting investigation finds out he posted [sexual] comments to a website, and people with the ability to take action knew about it, but did nothing.
NOW, replace [] with "radical Islamic" and see how it sounds like something recent at Ft. Hood. He was damned either way.
Re:Pussy. There, I said it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Blame not Kurt, but the schools headmaster? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Pussy. There, I said it. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't agree with the idea that social taboo as a means of behavioral regulation is a bad thing. Telling teachers to behave in a manner that highlights to children how we would like the future generation to conduct themselves is not OMG CENSORSHIP, it's the process by which tribal savages become productive farmers, who become orderly towns people who become civilized nations.
I think the time for the moral majority is dying, and I'm thrilled. Keep your social taboos off my freedom of speech.
I also don't think people should be fired for shooting their mouths off in a venue unrelated to their job. I mean for god's sake, he wasn't even posting under his own name, his IP was traced. Even if it wasn't, why shouldn't teachers be allowed to express themselves? Shouldn't they be encouraging free expression, even if it's vulgar, between the test-prep sessions?
Okay, his post was fairly puerile and probably not the funny response he wanted. What the hell, sometimes you drop a bomb. It doesn't mean you should lose your job.
Re:He got it coming (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think the main point of the outrage is that he lost his job, but rather that the journalist in question violated his website's own privacy rules and then gloated about getting the guy in trouble. I'd simply expect better from a journalist (although, in retrospect, with people like UK tabloid journalists and Fox News I'm not sure why), and I think that violating someone's privacy and then gloating about it is outrageous.
I do hope they fire this journalist, but I somehow doubt it.
Re:He got it coming (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose I could've modded you overrated,but that wouldn't do much more than fan the flames.
Let's look at this from another perspective.A Meta perspective.
Was the man wrong for typing pussy into a WWW forum?
A. From the standpoint of being an employee, you bet he was wrong.
B.From a freedom of speech in an open forum that made possible his opinion/joke perspective, no he was alright. Moderation and site administration are the responsibilities of the site owner.
Now the new question, was the paper wrong for tracking the man down merely to take out their anxiety on, when they enabled him and many others to write whatever they like without scripted moderation?
A.If he were actually protecting taxpayers,children,business assets he would be right, but this isn't the case. He did it out of anger on newspaper time to grind his own ax and make his moderating job easier by denial of freedom of speech to someone that he didn't know posted from a school. Had it been me from my home and a confrontation from him had ensued, he would be getting his nose reset.
B. This is just outright being a snitch to aquire feelings of self righteous vengeance. Were I the fired man, I would expend my resources to have the snitch investigated for anything useable to make his life hell. Alert the IRS to possible living beyond his means. Complain to the neighborhood association about any infraction. Complain to the police about any unusual noise or parking violations in front of his house.
I don't think you can find any case of society accepting a snitch as a welcome factor to any community. In the micro society of prison they are eliminated immediately. In society we end up having to pay for witness relocation. In schools they are the kid taunted mercilessly till graduation and possibly beaten frequently.
This amounts to the paper baiting the man who would've posted from his home,were that his location at the time. Truthfully I hope he gets a good lawyer and starts working the snitch and the paper over.
Resignation is often offered to well loved and respected offenders at most jobs for fireable offenses. Since it was a school and a newspaper was involved of course he was offered the choice. DUH.
Should the man have been smarter? yes
Should the man have been fired? no
Should the newspaper be exposed by a meta story? Yes, but that won't happen, Newsclowns won't rat on newsclowns anymore than a cop will out a cop.
This wasn't news this was revenge and I hope the rat gets his.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Pussy. There, I said it. (Score:2, Insightful)
The newspaper did the right thing. Someone repeatedly posting something after it has been deleted should be addressed. It was vulgar, and a large part of society thinks so. He did not get the poster fired, the poster resigned because he was discovered doing something he knew he shouldn't be doing and thought he couldn't be found out. Tough shit.
I told my son once when he lamented about people treating him based on the way he dresses that he was right, it's not fair. So he can either dress that way to try and change people's perceptions and accept the consequences until they do, or he can dress better. Neither one is the right answer, both influence one's life.
He choose to continue to dress the way he wanted, and decided he didn't care what people thought. The guy posting the vulgarity should have known that it would not be appreciated, and deal with the consequences of getting caught for his actions like an adult.
It's a newspaper, damn it. (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't matter whether he "had it coming" or not.
Contacting the school violated the stated privacy policy of the site, whether it was a student or staff. We're talking about a newspaper, for god's sake. A newspaper should be the first to stand behind their privacy policy. Reporters have gone to jail to maintain the privacy of their sources, and while the online equivalent of "letters to the editor" isn't quite in the same league as "Deep Throat", this was still unacceptable behavior.
The St Louis Post-Dispatch needs to step up to the plate and bat for their own goddamn rights. If they DON'T do something about this violation of privacy, they weaken their own ability to protect their sources.
Re:Pussy. There, I said it. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's only vulgar because we have collectively agreed to consider it as vulgar.
If the definition of vulgarity relies purely upon a social collective, then it's natural, and reasonable, for violations of such a collective to recursively deteriorate social structure.
"Fuck" is only profane if you keep considering it to be profane.
Is the action defined within a word an action you desire to covertly imbue upon your children? If so, then, by all means, most literally, spread the word. However, I know of few good parents who would approach the subject of sex lightly. Trusting a safe, civilized understanding of the world to surface within a child entirely through the context and connotation of vulgar language, and not overt explanation, is just asking for problems; kids already learn enough through observation to get themselves into trouble all the way through adulthood, why add insult to injury?
Re:Pussy. There, I said it. (Score:3, Insightful)
He didn't get fired, he resigned.
He resigned because someone at the paper got nosey and traced him, and when his bosses found out that his hands were in the "using state computer for personal business" cookie jar, he carked and quit.
A few things
1) The newspaper site was entirely within its rights to check its logs and complain to whoever the IP belonged to. In effect, this is no different from tracing an obscene phone call.
2) The teacher was in fact abusing the school's resources by using them for personal reasons.
3) If the school had used monitoring software on its network it could have caught the guy simply VISITING a personal site on the government dime without the paper's help of tattling on him.
Re:"Freedom of Speech" on the Internet (Score:2, Insightful)
Well the good news is that you're are totally right. Corporations aren't people. Nor are they rocks or trees. And even more good news is that a corporation will never ever fire you. It will always be a person who fires you. What's interesting about your post is that you seem to think the default is that you have a right to be employed at any business you want to be employed at and anyone who doesn't like it can quit. I assume that includes the founders and owners? Can you please explain where the hell you got this sense of entitlement?
Re:I see a lot of weak people here in the story... (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm ... you quote it right there pretty clearly:
"We may disclose personal information ... to protect against misuse ... of our web sites."
So ... what?
Re:Pussy. There, I said it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pussy. There, I said it. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is NOT about vulgarity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Freedom of Speech" on the Internet (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why I love Slashdot (I'm still too noob to call it /.)--I was all set to make my post in defense of the fired employee, but after reading the cogent arguments of the "5, Insightfuls", I've actually changed my opinion. It would be different if the employee had been fired because of an anonymous post made during personal time on personal equipment. But you don't have the same rights when using business equipment while on the job.
On the other hand, I'm still disturbed that the site owner didn't respect his own claim to comments being anonymous. I certainly have no right to expect anonymity. I would certainly be unwise to believe I have anonymity just because a site claims I do. But if a site owner claims you can make anonymous comments and then breaks that "agreement", I think it should discredit him. He's lost his site's users' trust at that point.
I am reluctant to comment (Score:4, Insightful)
The man at the newspaper who tracked the ip address, and identified the poster, should be fired. A newspaper should not be in the business of discouraging free speech. If the comment was offensive, it should have been moderated before publication (assuming there's a published policy against posting offensive material).
I am just guessing at what the man said, but unless it referenced some criminal act, tracking him down and getting him fired is inexcusable. The newspaper should issue an apology, and give him a job with an equivalent salary and benefits for life.
Re:Pussy. There, I said it. (Score:4, Insightful)
So glad you're familiar with every school district on the planet.
Re:Pussy. There, I said it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. Wrong. Aside from violating their own privacy policy, he (Greenbaum, the newspaper guy) went counter to the idea of anonymous commenting. If you want to be able to call someone out, don't allow anonymous posting. If an anonymous poster is being a nuisance (and one re-post probably should not qualify -- the poster could have assumed transmission error or some such) block his IP address.
Re:Kurt Greenbaum, you are stupid, puritanical scu (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Pussy. There, I said it. (Score:3, Insightful)
...the time line of events which are: Random guy makes post, Dir of social media takes offense, dir goes hunting for random poster, finds out it's from a school, sends complaint to school, finds out it's a teacher on school property, teacher is forced to resign.
My understanding from the article was that he sent the complaint to the school without knowing who the poster was. It could have been a pupil, for all he knew.
I amended my timeline to reflect that. What do you say should happen if it was a private residence? What do you say should happen if it was an office building? What do you say should happen if it was the White House or outside of the country?
As to your side note, the mental illness comment is there because you think it's okay for someone's life and livelihood be destroyed because of a word.
Re:"Freedom of Speech" on the Internet (Score:1, Insightful)
Eliminating "at will" employment would go a long way to making the USA again a First World country.
Re:"Freedom of Speech" on the Internet (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You're Right. It's About Manning Up (Score:5, Insightful)
If everybody put their money and their reputation where there mouths were, civilization might just lurch forward a little bit.
And where does a newspaper gloating about making someone lose their job for posting a single vulgar word twice on their site fall in there? I expect papers to have more ethics than that in a civilized society, so I think they've set civilization back a bit with this, not forward.
Re:He got it coming (Score:3, Insightful)
The most juvenile act in this story was the vindictive way the guy was hunted down.
I agree with you mostly, but I think that's the second most juvenile act in the story. The most juvenile act was posting and gloating about having made someone lose their job over a vulgar word.
Re:It's about open discourse (Score:2, Insightful)
Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually a "truly free country" is an anarchy.
You need rules in human interaction and a combination of a few pretty important of said rules is "you do not hunt down and stigmatize someone for making a sexual joke".
I do congratulate you on your subtle twisting of words, though.
Re:Pussy. There, I said it. (Score:3, Insightful)
That some school somewhere has a rule on the books about private use of the Internet?
Fortunately, school systems can determine their own rules. And they do.
Let's also not forget that lots and lots of companies and institutions have these kinds of rules on the book, completely unenforced.
Re:Pussy. There, I said it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, it's just a task that takes all day. If your wife only puts in 8 hours she's obviously not a teacher.
"may not access or download material from the Internet except for legitimate educational reasons" seems to be pretty clear to me.
"Staff may also use school equipment and networks for professional development and personal use which is both reasonable and appropriate to the school environment. This applies whether the equipment is owned or leased either partially or wholly by the school, and used on or off the school site."
Looks like you didn't read your own link.