Posted on 05/09/2007 7:50:46 AM PDT by agent_delta
MILLERSVILLE, Pa. - A 27-year-old Millersville University graduate filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against the college for denying her an education degree and teaching certificate after a controversial Internet photograph surfaced last year shortly before graduation.
The picture shows Stacy Snyder of Strasburg wearing a pirate hat while drinking from a plastic "Mr. Goodbar" cup. The photograph taken during a 2005 Halloween party was posted on Snyder's MySpace Web page with the caption "Drunken Pirate."
"The day before graduation, the college confronted me about the picture," Snyder said Thursday. "I was told I wouldn't be receiving my education degree or teaching certificate because the photo was 'unprofessional.' "
Snyder said she apologized for the photograph, but Jane S. Bray, dean of the School of Education, and Provost Vilas A. Prabhu refused to issue the bachelor of science degree in education and teaching certificate Snyder earned.
Instead, the college issued Snyder a bachelor of arts degree in English.
Millersville University spokesperson Janet Kacskos referred questions to the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education spokesman Kenn Marshall, who declined comment.
Snyder, a single mother of boys ages 9 and 7, works as a nanny for a family in Lititz.
"I dreamed about being a teacher for a long time," Snyder said. "When I was growing up, I spent more time with my teachers than my own parents, and it inspired me to someday make a positive impact on children."
Attorney Mark W. Voigt of Plymouth Meeting filed the lawsuit after failing to negotiate a hearing with Prabhu and Bray.
"Stacy deserves to be a teacher," Voigt said Thursday. "The bottom line is we want the college to bestow the degree and teaching certificate that Stacy earned during four years of hard work and sacrifice."
The lawsuit also seeks $75,000 in compensatory damages.
The university, Bray, Prabhu and professor/student-teacher supervisor J. Barry Girvin are named in the suit.
Voight writes in the lawsuit that Snyder, a dean's list student, performed her student-teaching requirements in 2006 at Conestoga Valley High School.
Teachers Deann Buffington and Nicole Reinking advised Snyder.
On May 8, Buffington called Snyder at home about an "issue" about her "professionalism" as a teacher, according to the lawsuit.
Reinking viewed the "Drunken Pirate" picture of Snyder on myspace.com and showed it to Buffington.
Buffington gave it to Girvin, who told Snyder "she may lose her teaching certificate due to the incident," according to the lawsuit.
Girvin also issued a final student/teacher evaluation of Snyder and granted "superior" or "competent" ratings in all areas except "professionalism." He gave Snyder and "unsatisfactory" rating, according to the lawsuit.
"There were errors in judgment that relate to Pennsylvania's Code of Professional Practice and Conduct for Educators," Girvin wrote in the evaluation.
On May 11, Girvin, Buffington and Reinking showed the "Drunken Pirate" photograph to Snyder, according to the lawsuit.
Buffington told Snyder that posting the photograph on the Internet was "unprofessional" and Conestoga Valley students might find it offensive.
Buffington also accused Snyder of "incompetence" and "claimed she should have been removed from her student-teaching position months ago."
Conestoga Valley officials told the college their students wouldn't be allowed to perform student-teacher requirements there if Snyder was not punished, according to the lawsuit.
Bray met with Snyder May 12. She accused Snyder of "promoting underage drinking through her 'drunken pirate' photo. Bray then stripped Snyder of her education degree and teaching certification, according to the lawsuit.
Snyder graduated the next day with an English degree.
Remember, the University has said NOTHING about what she did. Everything we know about the story we got from HER.
She SAYS she was punished for that picture. There is no independent evidence that this picture is the reason for her punishment.
The official evaluation says “Errors” in judgment, which implies there were more than one item on the list.
And they didn’t publish a list, which means either that the official notice from the school didn’t include a list, or the woman didn’t release the list to the reporter.
The university didn’t say anything to the reporter, all you know is what the woman SAYS the university said to her.
See, this story notes that it was the school where she was Student Teaching that had a problem, and those kids were minors.
This story is essentially the defense attorney’s press release. This happens a lot and FReepers go off on such stories without the least bit of cynicism. For many, it confirms whatever prejudices they have. Ironically, because of privacy laws, the schools can’t defend themselves.
Yes, I read the article again more closely. The school where she was student teaching clearly felt very strongly about it, or they would not have threatened to take no more student teachers from the college unless she was disciplined.
That’s taking the fight beyond personal likes and dislikes. My suspicion is that maybe she was directing students to her website and corrupting them, and when she was cautioned about that she refused to stop doing it. A student teacher normally has to do what she is told, and evidently she must have really provoked her supervisors.
As it happens, one of my daughters has been doing student teaching this past year, working toward certification. She has a nitwit supervisor who is clearly incompetent, but she has simply tried to get along as best she can and get recommendations from other people in the system. There are no signs in the article that the supervisors in Pennsylvania—and there are at least two of them involved in this—are incompetent.
The problem in your BIL's company is that the IT dept makes that info available whenever the busy-body boss requests it, and there's no policy in place to stop her from making the request.
At all of the places I've worked in IT, I've had the ability to get into or monitor just about anything I wanted. EMail, Internet Surfing, whatever. But....just because I have the ability to be all-knowing and all-seeing....doesn't mean that I want to use it. LOL!
Most employees think that IT is constantly monitoring everything little thing that they do online. I'll let you in on a little secret.....we don't. And, for the most part, we don't care! It's not like there's a flashing light that goes off everytime an employee gets an inappropriate joke in the email, or posts to FR when they should be working.
Now, I *will* say that the ability is there. That's why internet usage agreements are generally a part of the package you get when you sign on with a company (might be in the employee handbook, too...) Typically, for a manager to get this kind of info, there's a specific procedure that needs to be followed - it's been like that wherever I've worked. Sometimes a manager is trying to build a case for termination, or looking to find out why an employee's performance has slipped. But in all cases, before I provide that kind of info, the manager needs to follow a specific process with HR or security for me to pass that stuff on.
Every case I've ever had to look into in all of the places that I've worked has been completely cut-and-dried, no question that there was a problem. For instance, one employee had filled up his local hard drive with hardcore pornography, another was crusing for gay sex online. In every instance, the behavior had gotten so blatant that it was either affecting their job performance (surfing 8 hours a day), or other employees had complained about it (so-and-so has naked pictures on his desktop!).
IMHO, checking football stats is not grounds for investigation...unless your BIL is doing it all day long.
Actually, your scenario seems to be the most plausible reason what may be happening behind the scenes. It seems like the college dropped the ball and went about the wrong way here...
"Snyder said she graduated with a 3.15 GPA as an English education major. She earned a 3.49 GPA in English core courses and 3.90 in education core courses."
First, 3.15 as English Education? Not the smartest person. Worse, English and education must be easy. She had better GPA's in the core courses, which means she must have had terrible grades in her required electives.
From another article, she received a terrible evaluation from her Student Teaching assignment. I assume since she is going for a teaching certificate, that being good at your student teaching gig is an important factor in getting your degree.
Actually, HJ, I’m responding to the wording of your post
“It really looks to me like .....” Which is conjecture.
Again, that is what it said in HER Lawsuit. The High school district denies they threatened the university in any way. They did give her a bad evaluation. She had several pictures on her space, including one with an obscene gesture.
But the High school says the problem wasn't the picture, but was that she told her high school students to access and communicate with her through that web site, even after the school told her not to do so.
She even said, when continuing to do so, that she wasn't listening to them because she didn't figure they'd ruin her life over it.
It is their damn business if they are looking to hire that person to represent their company and that person is posting personal information in a public forum. If the person is already an employee, why not use their own computer during their personal time to conduct personal business? Why should an employee be able to demand privacy while utilizing company property to conduct personal business at any time?
Sorry, I'll stand by what I said. If you want privacy then don't post your personal life all over the very public internet.
Well, her performance issues seem to be about her student teaching gig. So they gave her a degree that didn’t require performance as a teacher. Her grades appeared adequate for the english degree.
They denied her a teaching degreee, which I presume required satisfactory results in student teaching.
I’m sure they can, but not here — it would be in the confidential reports sent from the high school to the university, and at the momeny only SHE can release them.
I assume she took down the picture from her myspace site.
She’s playing us all through the media, using the fact that she can say and release anything she wants selectively, and nobody else can counter her because of confidentiality.
1. Where is that picture? Is this another picture that you presume exists that dates from October of last year that the University should have removed her from her student teaching position over? Why didn't they?
2. They'll have to prove that she continued to direct students to her web site in court, I think. They'll have to produce documentation that she was ordered to remove the picture and not direct students to her MySpace site. Surely that's a signed document stating that in her personnel jacket? If that exists, she has no case. We can all go home happy (except for her and her lawyer) and you can stop slinging invectives.
3. "It is very serious. I wouldn't be so serious about this if it wasn't very serious, so acknowledge the seriousness of my seriousity" is not evidence no matter how seriously you plead the case. I am also uninclined these days to not take a high school administrator's word on anything without verification.
4. That post at #100 is someone else's testimony. I'm interested to see how a whole lot of testimony plays out under oath in court. Specifically if someone from the university told this Dean's List student teacher that she wasn't getting her credentials shortly before graduation when they should have had cause to remove her from the student teaching post based upon behavior that took place well some six months previous.
You're the one that has been making assumptions in this thread. That's fine, but I generally try to avoid that. If I were to guess here, I am starting to think that the university has no documentation regarding this student teacher's alleged misbehavior and they invented the MySpace picture excuse as a cover. Otherwise, why bring it up at all? The university has no human resources department? That's what they're there for: To prevent lawsuits.
Short of that, this is a case of 'Double-Secret Probation'.
I am content to wait and see how this suit ends up. Please ping me when it concludes.
I hope you go out and have a wonderful and tranquil Wednesday, Hamilton Jay.
That's what I've been trying to tell him. I am starting to suspect that they didn't document a thing here.
It's all on them if that's the case.
Buffington also accused Snyder of "incompetence" and "claimed she should have been removed from her student-teaching position months ago."
Buffingtion is workin' on his CYA cert.
Excet for the fact that there's a real lawsuit now. There is a discovery process that works both ways.
“First, 3.15 as English Education? Not the smartest person.”
.
.
WoW.... that’s pretty judgmental of you.
I graduated from college with about that as my GPA.
I also had a full time job ...
Walk in their shoes....
Cast the first stone...
Go placidly amid the noise and haste...
Pick one.
Suprisingly enough, you need an Education degree, not an English degree, to teach English in public schools. Since her goal was to become a teacher, the English degree is somewhat less useful.
Yes, that was judgmental of me. But I have to assume there were a lot of people in English that got better than a 3.15, so she wasn't the smartest person.
I graduated from Va. Tech long ago, in my year our university valedictorian was an English Major with a 4.0 average.
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