Interesting article about the danger to your career of posting on "MySpace" type web sites. The judge in the case, who made the ruling against the student teacher, was Paul S. Diamond appointed by President George W. Bush. Elections matter.
See the beginning of the article below:
July 19, 2010
The Web Means the End of Forgetting
By JEFFREY ROSEN
Four years ago, Stacy Snyder, then a 25-year-old teacher in training at Conestoga Valley High School in Lancaster, Pa., posted a photo on her MySpace page that showed her at a party wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a plastic cup, with the caption “Drunken Pirate.” After discovering the page, her supervisor at the high school told her the photo was “unprofessional,” and the dean of Millersville University School of Education, where Snyder was enrolled, said she was promoting drinking in virtual view of her under-age students. As a result, days before Snyder’s scheduled graduation, the university denied her a teaching degree. Snyder sued, arguing that the university had violated her First Amendment rights by penalizing her for her (perfectly legal) after-hours behavior. But in 2008, a federal district judge rejected the claim, saying that because Snyder was a public employee whose photo didn’t relate to matters of public concern, her “Drunken Pirate” post was not protected speech.
When historians of the future look back on the perils of the early digital age, Stacy Snyder may well be an icon. The problem she faced is only one example of a challenge that, in big and small ways, is...
Read the rest of the article at today's edition of the New York Times here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25privacy-t2.html?src=me&ref=general
Another article with very good links to a copy of the judge's decision and the photograph in question is found in the Washington Post here.
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