Be Careful In MySpace Or You May Get Denied A Degree
from the are-you-serious? dept
We've seen stories of people getting arrested for posting incriminating evidence of themselves on MySpace as well as people losing jobs over info posted to a MySpace profile... but what about losing a degree? techguy83 writes in to let us know of a lawsuit by a woman who was apparently denied an education degree and teaching certificate after school officials found a photo of the woman on her MySpace page from a Halloween party. In the photo (remember, this was a Halloween party), the woman was dressed as a pirate and the photo was captioned "Drunken Pirate." The school claims that the woman was encouraging underage drinking -- but the woman is 27 now and the photo was from 2005, meaning she was 25 (or close to 25) at the time. That's hardly underage. It's not clear why school officials were viewing the woman's MySpace page in determining whether or not she qualified for a degree -- but if other schools start doing the same, I'd imagine we're going to have an awful lot of students who have completed their qualifications, but have no degrees due to incriminating MySpace photos.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Ready to graduate
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Re: Ready to graduate
and jst say the truth.
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I think that school is in deep do-do...
I'd be talking to attorneys...
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In fact, I think that someone probably found this and reported it to the authorities who replied back by saying she isn't underage and "please don't waste our time with such bullshit in the future or we'll be quite inclined to fine you for filing a false report" which then set the dean on a path to figure out how to best screw this student over to satisfy their ego.
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We need
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Not that they would admit it if they had, but I think that there is a lot more to this than what we hear/read.
Also, the university is a public, state university, so it would/should not base its decisions on what it considers moral behavior.
It is an interesting discusion though, as are all of them involving personal information available on the internet. If you wouldn't post something on a billboard outside your home, don't post it publicly on the internet. I just can't understand why, in this day and age, people think that it is a good idea to go and use personally identifiable information.
Fortunatly, I am apparently the only person in the world with my name, so a search only turns up pages relating to me. Thus, I can easily see what's out there and available.
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What a bunch of wimps
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privacy on MySpace
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What does it NOT say?
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Perhaps she didn't get a 3.0 GPA? If that's not the case, this is pure bullshit.
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Re:
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You Go Girl...
Is drinking immoral if you are a photgraphed and posted online while wearing a pirate costume?
I feel the actions taken by the University are more immoral than the actions they sought to deter. In fact they are not just immoral they are libel. If I were this woman I would seek not only my proper degree but monetary compensation for defamation of character. The University by denying the award declared a public ATTACK on this ladies character by declaring her unfit for her degree. Begging the question... "What did this lady really do wrong... it couldn't be just drinking?" If the university was seeking to avoid bad public impressions as a result of this photo they may have accomplished just the opposite. In fact if the university had not done this it could be argued that less than a few hundred people in the world would have ever laid eyes upon that photo. How many do you think have seen it now that it is connected to a universities public display of stupidity? Now mention the fact that it wouldn't matter if she danced around in a g-string, with a pirate patch on her ya-ya, covered in boozes, on national TV. She is still legally entitled to her degree with all the rights, privileges, and honors thereunto appertaining.
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Oh dear...
And frankly if she did sue and I were the judge the first question would be: "How does a picture of a person of legal drinking age constitute the encouragement of underage drinking?" Next would be, "So does this mean that never having your picture taken while drinking is now on you list of graduation requirements?"
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Re: Oh dear...
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Re: Re: Oh dear...
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From the smokinggun article on this:
Like many others, I hope that one picture is not what caused this and that something is missing from the story.
Here is the link from the smoking gun:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0426072pirate1.html
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Her real fault appears to have been...
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re
http://www.alpha-school.com
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