I currently have the flu, which has kept me horizontal on the couch for the last few days mostly sleeping but also watching more TV in the last four days than I have in probably watched in the last year combined. While channel surfing yesterday I came across a news story that made me think. Well, made me think as much as my cough-syrup induced haze could.
The news story (and interview) was concerning Barrow County Georgia high school teacher Ashley Payne, who was forced to resign from her job in August when a parent complained about pictures that she had posted on her Facebook page of her holding alcoholic drinks on recent trip to Europe. This included wine in a restaurant in Italy and beer at the Guinness brewery in Ireland. The weirdest thing is none of the photos actually show her drinking the alcohol and she does not even look intoxicated in the photographs. However, the Barrow Journal reports that Payne’s principal, “objected to photos which showed Payne holding alcoholic beverages while on vacation and a status update which used a pejorative term for females.”
The whole story gets even more bizzarre when the issue of policy comes up. Again according to the Barrow Journal the school district does not currently have a social media/networking policy for its employees, but its board is set to vote on a policy on December 1st.
Part of the policy reads: “Employees who post information on Facebook, MySpace or similar web sites that include inappropriate personal information such as, but not limited to: provocative photographs, sexually explicit messages, use of alcohol, drugs or anything students are prohibited from doing must understand that if students, parents or other employees obtain access to such information, their case will be investigated by school and district officials and if warranted will be disciplined up to and including termination, depending upon the severity of the offense.”
Okay, my emphasis has been added because this is the part of this policy that I cannot understand. I get the drugs part because they are illegal, but I do not understand the alcohol or anything else part. This policy is so vague and broad. Does this mean that a teacher cannot post photographs of them LEGALLY drinking (or holding) alcohol at all because a student might manage to see it? Payne’s lawyer argues that this policy would even prevent an employee of Barrow County from having a glass of wine at a restaurant because a student might see them.
What about the “anything else” part. There are a lot of things that underage school children are not allowed to do but a teacher (because they are an adult) is, such as, the legal consumption of alcohol, driving a motor vehicle, viewing and owning pornography, etc. No matter how other people feel about these activities they are legal for an adult to do in their own free time. It seems like this policy could be manipulated in a number of ways.
So what I keep thinking in regards to this whole situation is: is it possible that employers can use social media/networking policies to control what their employees do when they are not at work? Can it really be legal for employees to be disciplined or fired or forced to resign because of what they post on their social networking sites, even if what the post is totally legal? I hope not.
3 replies on “Social Networking Disaster”
Welcome to the H1N1 club (maybe)! I hope that you’re feeling better – it should last only a few days… what did they put you on, medication-wise?
I like your post, and it speaks to issues that UBC is really interested in on the whole – for 505 I’m currently working on a project for Digital Tattoo, a site that UBC has established in order to make people more aware of their online identities and the importance of managing them. Institutions are always going to be critical of how their employees are publicly perceived, and this is highly unlikely to change (part of the reason I’m incredibly reticent about setting up a facebook account at all, though I’m currently experimenting with the privacies allowed through a series of pseudonyms). I’m not sure that fairness or hypocrisy has anything to do with hirings / firings based on online profiles; disciplinary action has been taken for lesser reasons or motivations than these. I think the message really is to manage one’s digital footprint in a way that doesn’t betray any potential negatives, and to teach others to do so at a very early age – BC highschool teachers recognize this as well, and have contacted the Digital Tattoo Project for lesson plans on how to do precisely this (I’m currently building a survey / questionnaire that will likely be incorporated into the package – interesting stuff).
I hope not too – but I think if I were a teacher I wouldn’t engage in SNS at all – just to be safe. A lot of teachers I know don’t join, or participate on a very limited basis, on Facebook or similar sites, not because they are worried about being reprimanded or fired, but because they don’t want their students knowing about certain aspects of their personal life. It’s the personal/professional divide again.
Thanks for the comments. I don’t know what kind of flu it is because the nurse’s line told me not to go to the doctor or hospital unless my fever sent over 40 degrees and it nicely stayed around 39 for me! But it is taking forever to get over. Today is day seven.
I agree that it is important to manage one’s digital footprint and to make sure that others, especially children, are aware that what they do online can often be seen even if they think it cannot.
My husband is a teacher and he has his security settings on and would never accept a student as a friend, but he also wants to be involved in using social media and networking.
What I think is really crazy about this story is that the teacher was not doing anything remotely inappropriate. And if employers can enact policies that have wide ranging “and anything else” sections that is just insane. That means teachers cannot do very much if they have to ensure they are not doing something a parent of a student would disagree with or think inappropriate. Five blocks of thirty students each with the possibility of two parents means a teacher has to make sure they are not offending upwards of three hundred parents. What if a library enacted a policy like this to govern its staff? What if as a public librarian we had to worry that a patron might see our Facebook page and could make a complaint against us for it.
I think Deirdre is right about this all relates to the personal/professional divide, but maybe the people complaining should be the ones getting lessons on what is personal and what is professional.