Missouri High School Principal Resigns After Posing As Student On Facebook 190
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."
This happens more than you think (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.
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When I was a kid in high school, some of the faculty dated a few of the students and got the low down on the social scene this way.
You kids have it easy. Now stay off of my lawn!
Re:This happens more than you think (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This happens more than you think (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, Facebook "creeping" seems unscrupulous, but it is much, much better than the alternatives.
It's a boundary violation. Passing as a student creates inappropriate relationships between kids and people who are supposed to be authority figures and professionals.
"The alternative" is what, exactly? Spying on kids without probable cause and something resembling judicial oversight is just teaching them to expect the same behavior from law enforcement or other authorities once they become adults and make it out into the real world. Its probably different for 10-year-olds. But kids have to have a continuum of responsibility and autonomy. High school is right next to adulthood and people need to behave as such.
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Spying on kids without probable cause and something resembling judicial oversight is just teaching them to expect the same behavior from law enforcement or other authorities once they become adults and make it out into the real world.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
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It is if they don't also learn it is a corruption of everything this country is supposed to be about.
But if they learn THAT, education ends because the students will be unable to respect the faculty (though truth be known, there are plenty they shouldn't respect).
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Re:This happens more than you think (Score:5, Insightful)
The real alternative is to teach our children not to accept friend requests from strangers. I find it shocking that 300 people accepted her friend requests without so much as raising an eyebrow.
Re:This happens more than you think (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably not so obvious as all that. I expect that after the first half dozen or so had accepted her friend requests, after that everyone knew she was a friend of [someone they already knew]...
Re:This happens more than you think (Score:5, 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.
Re:This happens more than you think (Score:4, Insightful)
It took 300 people before *any* suspicions were raised...
Seriously- I don't care how many mutual friends I have with a random invite, I'm not going to share my personal life with them until I know who they are. I have been known to accept LinkedIn requests from strangers, where I see some professional value in doing so, but I don't post pics of my family on linkedin...
Re:This happens more than you think (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a WORLD of difference between snooping into business practices to make sure they're on the up-and-up, and snooping into the PRIVATE LIVES of citizens.
We accept business intrusions because it ensures that businesses (well, intends to ensure..) aren't exploiting workers or insider information.
We should never, ever accept snooping into private lives -- especially when that snooping is used to punish citizens for actions that took place outside and apart from the authority punishing them.
Re:This happens more than you think (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
"Friends only" surely carries some expectation of privacy. Certainly it does not carry the expectation that the principal, pretending to be a teen girl, can freely read it.
Re:This happens more than you think (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to talk to your friends or brag about drugs, skipping school/work, lying about a disability [marketingpilgrim.com] etc. why not do it the old fashioned way? Writing it down leaves a paper trail; which is why when privacy is concerned things are done face to face.
The overall trend of the judiciary seems to be moving toward greater permissiveness for e-discovery with regard to social media, as well as a strong likelihood that privacy concerns will be outweighed by the weight and relevance of the information.
Interesting read here too, seems the courts don't always agree. [krollontrack.com]
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Note in the decision that it was based on information posted in the PUBLIC profile. In that case, I can easily agree that PUBLIC profile isn't PRIVATE.
It was because of that that he allowed discovery of the private portions.
It's also notable that all such rulings are WRT discovery (in other words, there was due process). Surely the principal couldn't claim to come by the information as part of discovery, court order, or any other due process.
Personally, I don't trust facebook enough to post anything there I
Re:This happens more than you think (Score:5, 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 [gamall-steinn.org]):
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.
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Private businesses are unscrupulous and ruthless with very little accountability, profit at any cost... If you don't do something to keep them in check then they will abuse to the maximum possible extent if it helps improve the bottom line.
Dating students? (Score:2)
Did they get fired for that?
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Crap, at my high school, as I later found out (it wasn't common knowledge at the time), three of the four P.E. teachers had married students, and that a fifth, who had moved to middle school but who had been part of the faculty at the time had also married a student.
Nowadays, of course, these guys would be registered sex offenders, banned from a specific radius around the school or being the presence of someone under the age of 18, and so on. Back then it was just "Naughty man, now marry that girl!" Hell, I
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Sounds like we went to the same high school. The school fight song was banjo music (figuratively).
When I was in junior high, one kid got in a (seemingly) unprovoked fight with a teacher in the classroom (I witnessed it). Neither got suspended/fired. Later on, I heard the rumor that it was because they had the hots for the same girl.
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Well given a teacher at a school in X area likely taught most adults in X area it hardly seems fair to forbid teachers from entering into relationships with adults that happen to have been taught by them at some point. Such limitations would severely limit the pool of available partners.
Perhaps in my naivety I'm too quick to discard the possibility that they had really married people that were still students at the time and that this somehow wasn't common knowledge. My apologies if this is the case.
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When I was a kid in high school, one of the faculty slept with one of his students behind the back of his terminally ill wife, got away with it, and eventually married her (ok, maybe he didn't quite get away with it).
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even taking age out of consideration, yes, it is still considered bad. why? because at the very least it is a conflict of interest.
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It's not just about age, its the fact that she is in a position of authority and trust.
People in such positions have been known to wield their position as a way to influence someone into bed with them... This is generally called grooming.
Now if you were 19 and seeing a teacher who works at a different school to you i doubt anyone would care.
Re:This happens more than you think (Score:5, Funny)
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...
This word 'old'...I don't think it means what you think it means.
Re:This happens more than you think (Score:4, Funny)
It obviously refers to things in the distance past, say, more than 2 months ago.
Re:This happens more than you think (Score:5, Funny)
It obviously refers to things in the distance past, say, more than 2 months ago.
As a Last Thursdayist, I object to your insensitive notion that anything existed more than 2 months ago.
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Is that one in the Kama Sutra?
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Their usage is so common that I'm really confused why you're nitpicking this. Virtually any time I've ever heard someone mention something about school they used to go to, the phrase was always along the lines of "at/in my old elementary/middle/high school".
That's not even considering the possibility that they're still in high school and they switched to a different one.
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Either that or GP transferred high schools.
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"Old" is often used colloquially to mean "former", "previous", "prior".
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If you can't prove it, you don't "know" it.
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You can too prove it to yourself, and you probably have many times. It's not hard to set up an experiment.
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I'm not on Facebook so I don't understand. Why would anyone add a stranger as a friend, much less 300 students doing this?
Re:This happens more than you think (Score:4, Insightful)
1) You're a kid. You've spend most of your life trying to get a high score on computer games. Facebook is fun, interactive, and on a computer, so your instincts are telling you to do well at it and get a high score. It's hard *not* to look at the friends count as a 'score', measuring how good you are at Facebook.
2) Ever been an unpopular kid in school? Social hierarchies mean a lot to kids, and Facebook makes 'being the unpopular kid' a measurable statistic. Add a few more people and you are measurably, provably, not the unpopular kid.
Facebook's exponential growth certainly isn't due to good design, strong privacy or those oh, so enjoyable farmville requests, it's down the the intense pressure on all students to have an above average number of friends.
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Yeah.... but no.
Facebook is popular because (this might shock you) people like it.
As to high "friend scores" most of the people who use facebook aren't gamers. Nor does it have anything to do with social hierarchy. It's simple: one more friend is one more person whose gossip you have access to. The cost? One more person as an audience to your thoughts. You gain access to gossip in exchange for attention. You only benefit without any cost except for the time to press "OK". There are of course subtl
Let's hear it for Louise Losos (Score:5, Funny)
She put the "Pal" i n principal!
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News for nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
Slow news day eh timothy?
She was running Linux.... (Score:5, Funny)
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stuff that matters!
Something very similar happened at my school: (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.
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Don't you have a couple of fake students' FB accounts? A couple of jocks, a couple of stoners (I know, redundant), etc. They can advertise the occasional kegger at the address of an empty lot and see how fast the cops show up.
More related to nerd news than you would think (Score:5, Insightful)
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My guess is that she heard about the facebook page opposing the action against the coach, and created a fake account to read it. Then curiosity got the better of her and she started friending the students to see what they were up to.
Maybe she didn't realise it was wrong. Maybe she did, but the curiosity and feeling of anonymity got the better of her.
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She pretended to be a student? Doesn't sound that wrong to me if that's all she did.
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From the article;
If administrators were monitoring students' Facebook activity without being truthful about their identity, that is a breach of trust, Brown said in an interview.
She pretended to be a student so that she could monitor student activity on Facebook. In my mind it is also fraud in that she misrepresented her identity to gain information that she would not normally have access to.
Her actions after she was found out is proof of a guilty conscience. Had she come out and admitted to faking an account and defended why she did it I may have believed that she had been mistaken in her actions. Instead, she ran, hid and quit her job; no apology, no explanation.
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Worse than that, she probably violated facebook's ToS. Somebody call the cops!
Re:More related to nerd news than you would think (Score:5, Insightful)
She pretended to be a student? Doesn't sound that wrong to me if that's all she did.
If she had time for this crap then her salary was useless overhead anyway.
Ever wonder why schools always need more and more money? Adjusted for inflation, expenditures for students and salaries for teachers haven't changed much at all relative to the far higher amount we pay for public schooling compared to 20-30 years ago. What has changed? The number of administrative staff has drastically increased.
And this is how they use their time?
Also, it bothers me the way you think it's acceptable for an authority figure to deceive impressionable young people in order to learn about things that happen outside of school that those young people would not have voluntarily shared with said authority figure. If you're a fan of authoritarianism and the use of surveillance with no justification, please explain why. Somehow I doubt you would personally like for your life to be subject to such people, but maybe I have that all wrong.
It's possible they'll never admit it, but many young people would love to see an authority figure who is honest, noble, and genuinely respectable. For most of them it would be the first time they have ever witnessed such a thing.
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Society as a whole has started expecting teachers to be psychologists, parents, moral guardians, mediators, police and what not.
As long as we keep expecting teachers to do more than teach students in math, chemistry and history etc. then to be able to fulfill all these additional obligations they will need additional tools a
Re:More related to nerd news than you would think (Score:5, Insightful)
There seems to be no possible motivation for this behavior that isn't pretty creepy. Maybe we just have different definitions of wrong.
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it she was aiming to take action against people who criticized her that should be a 1st amendment violation.
The 1st Amendment doesn't mean there are no consequences for the things you say, it just means the government can't prevent you from saying them.
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Re:More related to nerd news than you would think (Score:4, Insightful)
"or was it just to know the current vibe among?"
JUST to know the current vibe amount?
JUST?
There are so many reasons this is wrong no matter the reasons. Whatever the principal's intentions, you'd still have access to information that if the principal even sees is a possible professional violation. Who's dating/sleeping with who, possible inappropriate pictures for an administrator to see (even kids in their swimsuits is extremely questionable), and yes, opinions on school staff that could bias her opinion in ways that it should not.
Whatever her intention, there is absolutely no professional excuse. She can't just filter out the safe information from the unsafe without seeing everything, which is the problem.
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Forget the technology, imagine she had called them or wrote a letter claiming to be someone else, or put on a dis
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My intent was to say that in her own head, she might think her actions were for the good of the school, but professionally there is no gray area in gaining private information on students without their legitimate consent, no matter what that information is.
So yeah, I agree with you.
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It's the information students share WITH THE WHOLE WORLD ONLY?
... that she felt a need to lie in order to obtain.
See, it's the lying and the blatant dishonesty that is the problem here. It should never be tolerated from any authority figure. Especially those who work with impressionable youth.
Is that really so difficult to understand?
Re:More related to nerd news than you would think (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the information students share WITH THE WHOLE WORLD ONLY?
No it's not. Facebook has privacy settings to select who you share information with. No, that's not ironclad, but it's also no excuse for the principal to misrepresent herself to acquire this information that she could have not easily acquired without friending the kids.
If the whole world could get at the info, she wouldn't have needed to friend them in the first place, would she?
Know your friends (Score:5, Insightful)
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When I was on Facebook, I didn't friend anyone unless I actually *knew* the person.
I feel the same way. That's why Facebook is completely useless to me and never appealed to me. Make sense? If I had some unhealthy need for the casual attention of strangers and distant acquaintences then I would have a case for using Facebook.
If I wanted substandard Web hosting or if I wanted to play frivolous mini-games I can do that without the long list of downsides that come with using Facebook.
Re:Know your friends (Score:4, Insightful)
When I was on Facebook, I didn't friend anyone unless I actually *knew* the person.
I feel the same way. That's why Facebook is completely useless to me and never appealed to me. Make sense? If I had some unhealthy need for the casual attention of strangers and distant acquaintences then I would have a case for using Facebook.
If I wanted substandard Web hosting or if I wanted to play frivolous mini-games I can do that without the long list of downsides that come with using Facebook.
Yes... Facebook is pretty useless if you don't actually have any friends, and I certainly wouldn't suggest that you should use it. For those of us who do have friends, though, it's a convenient way to stay in touch (particularly for friends I can't see regularly because they don't live nearby).
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Same here. Between friends, colleagues, and relatives, I've got 6 of 7 continents covered.
I have about 230 friends on Facebook. All but about 20 of them I've met in real life. Those I haven't are colleagues with whom I've worked remotely but not yet had the opportunity to meet face to face.
I don't friend anybody who's not a real-life friend, colleague, or relative, or who's not someone I've collaborated with professionally. Nor do I feel the need to do so.
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And even if you know a person by that name, then there's the next problem: authenticating. Hey Facebook, why no PGP signing of profile ids yet?
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Sounds like your only recourse is to file a lawsuit. Sue the person who's doing it, and subpoena Facebook to find out who that is.
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Know your friends
But if I don't friend them, how am I supposed to keep my enemies closer? :)
What's shocking is that kids still need to be told this. I thought they were supposed to be smarter than us when it comes to all this social/tech crap.
Surprisingly common occurence (Score:2)
Losos could be in the shit (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.
Re:Losos could be in the shit (Score:4, 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.
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Is a principal considered a teacher here in the US?
The word "principal" is short for "principal teacher", from way back when.
I'm not quite sure when principals stopped teaching as a matter of course.
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I had principals teach classes as subsititutes in my American schools. So, that seems to count them as teachers.
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I'm a little shocked that there are so many general shrugs in this thread at what she did. Everything between oh well it is Facebook, what do you expect? To that it is FOR THE CHILDREN!
I may have missed something but that was my 1st thought upon opening this thread was what is the legality here? And it took a lot of comments before anything was said to that point. Le sigh.
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What's worse, the school district seems to be covering up any attempt to find out if that's the reason why she resigned.
This, to me, is the real story. From the article:
"The district denied requests for related documents through Missouri's open records law, saying they are confidential personnel records. Losos will be paid through June."
It's disgusting that the school board is even trying to keep this under wraps, let alone getting away with it. I hope the voters make them accountable.
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Sounds like it didn't actually go into effect: Missouri Repeals Law Restricting Teacher-Student Internet And Facebook Interaction [huffingtonpost.com]
And she'd have gotten away with it too... (Score:5, Funny)
if it hadn't been for those meddling kids.
How daft are these kids... (Score:3)
...to accept a friend request from someone they've never heard of? Is this why all the kids have 600 FB friends despite their actually pretty limited social circles?
I went to the same high school (Score:4, Informative)
Hi, posting AC 'cuz im lazy.
I went to school with this woman, her older sister was in my class and IIRC they both went to Harvard. My point in saying that is that I'd always had the impression that these were smart ladies. Certainly older sister is, I believe she is a scientist of some sort now. I really don't keep up with people from high school.
We went to a public high school in a nice part of St. Louis, Louise went back after college and taught there for 8 years apparently.
If you google her name you will see her LinkedIn page pop up. You can see she has an extensive background getting her degrees, including a Ph.D.
She is plenty smart to know better than to spy on the students. If she just had to know what was going on in her school, she should have actually taken the time to get to know people and talk to them. To me this is only common sense.
No telling what happened to that in her 25 years of education/work since she left high school. People change, but I dont see where it is right to spy on kids on Facebook. As a matter of fact, I find it rather nosy and a bit creepy.
Clayton, Mo. is a wealthy city just immediately west of the city of St. Louis itself, so they will do everything to cover this one up and pretend it never happened.
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Maybe if you friend request her on Facebook, she'll let some details slide. Keep us informed!
Re:principal (Score:5, Insightful)
Could you at least read the summary, if not the article? The principal is Louise Losos, a woman.
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In stories like this, it's almost never worth reading the article, and the summary is usually wrong anyway. The reporter spent 400 words to expand a 40 word brief, and then another 600 words on a story that is only vaguely related because the principal apparently used the fake profile to spy on kids who supported some guy who was fired.
Having read this article closely, now I feel sorry for Ms. Bock that she's got such a shitty beat...
Re:principal (Score:5, Informative)
Ms. Bock did more than just puff up a story - there was the fact-checking of school records to see if there was such a student, as well as a search of public records for ANYONE with that name. That's more than what passes for "reporting" on Faux News.
She also put it into the greater context of the on-going school board problems.
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Who knows? Evidently this person enjoys pretending to be someone else...might actually be Louis Losos in drag...
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Before posting something completely silly that destroyed a few brain cells, couldn't you at least look at the article - the woman's picture, the fact that the school board confirmed her identity as principal, etc?
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In this case it was also motivated by school politics - an ongoing vendeta between her+the school board against a popular teacher who had the vocal support of a lot of the students, whose contract was not renewed.
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If that's her birth name, I can't tell if her parents were evil or geniuses (or both).
Quite possibly one or both of them were Superman fans.
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Re:Political correctness has gone far too far. (Score:5, Informative)
It grates badly enough on old ears to hear "they" and "them" be used for singular
Only if you're a moron. The practice dates back to at least Chaucer, presumably earlier since it's unlikely he invented it. 'They' has been the gender neutral singular since Middle English. It's a lot older than you are, so I can only conclude that it grates on your ears because you never read any proper literature in the English language (like Shakespeare, Jane Austen, or George Bernard Shaw). The idea that it shouldn't be the gender neutral singular is a fabrication of 19th century assholes. Don't be like them.
Re:Political correctness has gone far too far. (Score:5, Funny)
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Informative grammar Nerd crushes grammar Nazi like a grape, win-win!
zomg +5 pwned
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+1
Look, A Grammar Nazi! Stop Them! (Score:2)
Singular they has rapidly taken over to the point where it's now even used for persons where there is a presumed gender. While I may be fighting a losing battle, by god does it need fighting.
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. We don't have separate pronouns for different races, young vs. old, short vs. tall, fat vs. skinny, smart vs. stupid, obstinate grammar nazi vs. speaker of contemporary english, etc., so what makes the detail of gender so important that it alone must be embedded in the pronoun? I really can't see a purpose for automatically referencing gender every time you refer to a person o
Re:Look, A Grammar Nazi! Stop Them! (Score:4, 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).
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Everything different grates on someone's old ears; forgive me, but I don't really care. If your only objection to something is no more than a vague distaste, you should at least keep your opinion to yourself and not try forcing it on others. Either have a good reason to dislike something or stay out of it.
I haven't heard a single substantive argument for barring singular "they" and "them"--calling their use "incorrect" or "ungrammatical" is not sufficient. On the other hand, there are a number of good reaso
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That depends on the part of the story that's being left out: How did the quarterback figure out who the infiltrator was? Figuring out Suzy is fake: easy. Figuring out that Suzy is the principal: social engineered (CNN story) or other (maybe Slashdot story).