Ouch! York TA in the news
>> Saturday, March 19, 2011
Today on facebook, one of my connections posted a link to an article in the Toronto Star: York TA apologizes after criticizing students on Facebook.
My first response, on reading the article, was to groan over the spelling and grammar of the comment, which was quoted in the article. Yikes! If you're going to complain about other peoples' writing abilities.... well...
Easy pickings, that.
But really, I feel really badly for this poor T.A. Who among us doesn't vent someplace? Online, even?
It's all well & good to say that facebook (or blogs....) are public and can come back to bite you in the ass - we know that ... but seriously.... do you not post stuff occassionally that maybe you would wish you hadn't if it popped up in the local newspaper? I know I have!
Her comments were obviously not professional - but they weren't meant for her students, or for the newspaper, either, and it seems more than a little unfortunate that they ended up there.
I'm assuming that she did not have her profile wide open if she was posting that sort of thing - did one of her connections do a bit of copying & pasting? Not nice, if so.
I wonder who told the press about it? Also not nice - and I'm not very impressed that the press ran with it either.
Yes, it was dumb. But it was the sort of dumb mistake that lots and lots of people make - and to name one that got caught and likely ruin any chance of her ever overcoming that error ...any chance of an academic career, at the very least - that just seems altogether too harsh to me.
What I don't understand is how a ill-considered comment can destroy one's career (even if it's only bad if taken out of context), but people can do incredibly stupid things obviously against the will of their constituents, obviously in their responsible areas worst interest, and come out fine. Here in the US, the TA would have been in better shape if he'd made a pass at a student. Or one can be a professional commentator and say completely horrific and obviously false things and walk away clean.
I do not get it.
Social media like Twitter and Facebook, aren’t just as fun to connect and explore, they are also claiming few victims. One irresponsible tweet or post can do harm to your career or your hard earned reputation. And this is exactly what happened with this teacher. Whether you agree or not, like it or not, you can’t get away with irresponsible behaviour even on the virtual world.