“Does anyone know where I can find a very discrete hitman? Yes, it’s been that kind of day…” This was the Facebook status of Gloria Gadsden who was a sociology professor at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania. No sooner was this posted, she was fired for this offensive status update. Apparently, this was not the first time she commented on her students. In February, she “had a good day today. DIDN’T want to kill even one student. :-) Now Friday was a different story.” She claims that her posts were just a joke and were not to be taken seriously and was not aware that other people other than her friends and family could see her profile. It is reported that a student called attention to this even though the student was not on Gadsden’s friend list. “My friends and family knew I was being facetious. They knew I wasn’t targeting anyone.” Her spurious were not happy with this violent posting because there had been a prior meeting with the faculty about the shooting spree by another professor at the University Alabama-Huntsville. Marilyn Wells who is the university’s interim provost and vice president for academic affairs said that, “Given the climate of security concerns in academia, the university has an obligation to take all threats seriously and act accordingly.”
(This article was retrieved from: ABCNews.com)
Okay, who of us haven’t said an empty threat to a certain degree? I could have my update as “Sarah hates her roommate and wants to kill her because she comes in late all the time! :P” and know that this was empty (this is NOT true; I love you Anna!!!). What makes this “empty” is that I ended my status with a little face. Now if you look back, Gadsden did have a happy face in her status prior to the one that fired her. This tells me that she really didn’t truly mean it and I highly doubt that her tone changed in a month... she just forgot the little face for this update. One, who is dumb enough to really go and acquire a hit man on Facebook?! (Maybe I shouldn't ask that….) But still…. Who would and TRULY mean it?
I was thinking that there HAD to be some underlying problem with this teacher. You can’t just fire a professor just because of one questionable statue update. I feel like the university was patiently waiting for the perfect time to be able to “justly” fire her. The First Amendment states that citizens have freedom of expression. I believe that this professor was acting within the boundaries of the amendment. It’s not like she was yelling “fire” in a theater. She was jokingly saying that she wanted to kill her students after a hard day at work; is this a crime? In the summary of the article, it indicated that Gadsden had a numerous status updates that alluded to the death of her students. Within the statement of Facebook, Gadsden did not violate any of the Safety content (in my opinion).
My dear reader, do you believe that it was right for the university to fire her?
sARAH
Oh, I just heard about this! One of my professors read her "Ratemyprofessor.com" profile after hearing this news story, and apparently there seems to have been a consistently tense relationship between the students and this professor (not just this semester). I would agree that the university most likely had probable cause to fire her and the status was a last straw kind of situation. That school official cited the "climate of security concerns", so maybe an "empty" threat like this is now being considered seriously and isn't necessarily covered under the first amendment (like other terrorist threats)?
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree. I think they had good reason to fire her.
ReplyDelete