Student Denied Degree Due to MySpace Photo
Imagine that you're at 27 year old student days away from graduating from the School of Education at Millersville University of Pennsylvania and you're at a party, have a photo taken of you wearing a pirate hat and sipping from a plastic cup, and you post it to your MySpace page with the caption, "drunken pirate," and then your school refuses to aware you the degree in education and the teaching certificate that comes along with it. Fair? Not according to Stacy Snyder.
Millersville administrators, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the image of a 27 year old wearing a funny hat and drinking out of a plastic cup on her own time was somehow "unprofessional" so they essentially barred her from earning a living in her chosen profession and instead awarded her a degree in English. No word on what punishment they've handed out to faculty who have been photographed wearing fancy hats and drinking fine wine out of crystal glasses.
Stacy has filed a federal lawsuit in an effort to force Millersville to issue to her the education degree and teaching certificate. She's also seeking $75,000 in compensatory damages from the university.
Some day, hopefully sooner rather than later, more states than just Colorado and Minnesota will provide protection for people like Stacy. According to employment attorney George Lenard, those two states have laws that explicitly protect all employees from discrimination for engaging in any lawful activity off premises during non-working hours. Employees in other states have no such protection. Yet.
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