Students Who Caught Gym Teacher Stealing Money From Lockers May Get Punished

from the that-doesn't-seem-right... dept

A few years back, we had a story about some students using a mobile phone camera to record a teacher's outburst on film. Rather than disciplining the teacher who appeared way out of line, and who had pulled a chair out from under a student, the school disciplined the students for filming the teacher. In what may be a similar situation, reader Pickle Monger alerts us to the story of some students who got upset about money regularly disappearing from their lockers. After complaining to school officials and getting no help at all, they set up a mobile phone camera to record what happened to the lockers... and actually caught their gym teacher breaking into the lockers to steal the students' money.

So how is the school reacting? Celebrating the ingenuity and the sleuthing skills of the kids in catching a bad teacher stealing money from students? Nope:

A school spokesman said it's possible the student who recorded the cell phone video could get in trouble as well because students are not supposed to use their phones during the day.

School officials said they are not allowed to record video in locker rooms because of privacy.

Now, obviously the situation is a little more complicated due to the privacy issues in a locker room, but there's no indication that there were any privacy problems here at all. The whole purpose was to catch the thief that the school wouldn't catch. Punishing students for breaking those rules, while ignoring the reasons why they did it, teaches a really bad lesson to students.

Filed Under: mobile cameras, school, spying