Drunken pirate shouldn’t be tossed

The glare of the computer screen is giving you a headache. This research paper just will not get done. You need something to relax your mind – yes, it’s time for Facebook or MySpace. You login, check who is online, and click through the newly tagged photos of last weekend’s revelries.

Man, was that a crazy party! And that photo of you – wow, were you drunk. Surely most – though certainly not all – students share this common experience. After all, it is college. Few, however, could imagine that a little photo documentation of your excess could cost you not just your job, but maybe even your degree.

But such were the consequences for Stacy Snyder. Snyder attended Millersville University where she was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in teaching and, as required by her university program, was a student teaching at a local high school.

This local high school eventually barred Ms. Snyder from campus when it discovered a photo of her on MySpace with the caption “drunken pirate.” The photo depicted Snyder, adorned in pirate attire, tipping back a plastic cup. Both the university and high school eventually claimed she was encouraging underage drinking (Snyder was 27), and the university even went as far as to convert some of Snyder’s credits to change her teaching degree into an English one.

Snyder sued the university on claims that they had violated her right to free speech. Last week, the judge ruled against Snyder, stating that the school did, in fact, have the right to deny her the degree.

Civil society has a decision to make: How are we going to mediate the realities of our new media of communication such as Facebook and MySpace? Snyder’s case displays a society whose maturity has not caught up with these media.

It sets an unhealthy precedent for our future behavior in confronting such realities as Snyder’s “drunken pirate” photo. All Facebook and MySpace do is highlight a truth that has always been: People drink sometimes. Get over it.

Provided the drunkards do not arrive on the doorsteps of the school inebriated, a photo should not lead to their firing. Our society demands transparency, and yet finally, when our communication technology allows this transparency, we act surprised by the reality it depicts.

This is about a benign photo on a benign social network. Such a reality does not amount to Snyder being denied her degree.

It is easy to claim that it was Snyder’s responsibility to keep such photos off of her MySpace page. But before you moralize, flip through the pages of your memory. Have you ever acted in excess and found evidence of it on Facebook?

Does this suggest that you are incapable of your chosen profession or major? It is an increasingly inevitable that such behavior will be accessible to the public, no matter how much we guard against it.

Instead of using our communication media to hold individuals to an unreasonable standard, we should utilize them to have a discussion about actual reality, not the puritanical reality we mistakenly desire.