Should she be fired? This is just in the worst bad taste and outrageous.
Bad taste and outrageous, yes. A fire-able offense? I’m sure the Founding Fathers would have a say in such a situation, seeing as they put in this thing, in the Constitution, called freedom of speech.
Yes. But I would hope that like the teacher who posted racist YouTube videos, she would resign. I would hope that students would boycott her classes. I would hope that she would apologize for such an ad hominem attack. Makes you wonder what kind of people are being hired to teach.
Social media is not your friend…this will get her some unwanted attention.
I think it’s unfortunate that after the kerfluffle, she tweeted the phone number of a crisis mental health hotline, pretending it was her own so people could call her. That’s not very nice. I used to volunteer at such a hotline and it’s often stressful enough.
A legal analysis I found persuasive says that the offensive comments on Barbara Bush are not a firing offense, but jamming the crisis mental health line is.
Is this story anywhere other than Daily Mail? Wasn’t the Daily Mail recently labeled an unreliable source by Wikipedia?
Answered my own question and see it elsewhere.
She tweeted something disgusting. Of course it’s awful but unless we are going to start monitoring everyone’s online public comments and firing them for saying something like this, then no. Who is going to volunteer to look up the employment of every person currently all over social media saying that poor woman who died in the Southwest incident yesterday was a result of karma for working for Wells Fargo? It wasn’t that long ago that Louise Slaughter died and the comments I saw on the Facebook new sites from posters was just as disgusting as what this professor said. Who wants to ruin those commenters lives as well?
Unlike 99% of situations where someone yells “1st Amendment free speech!” to escape the consequences of their bad behavior, I believe it actually applies in this case as she’s a state employee and the state can’t take action against her for expressing her opinions as a private citizen.
Now if she did clog up the phone lines of a hotline on purpose, that can obviously be prosecuted if there’s a law against it. And then she could get fired if there’s a university regulation about tenured professors being arrested for whatever, but that would be a roundabout way of punishment not directly related to what she said.
People get fired by private companies all the time because of stupid social media comments. I wonder why one would have special protections as a state employee. And flaunting ones tenure that they could get away with anything and not be fired? If I was her supervisor, I’d want to get rid of her for that alone. I can’t imagine having such a hostile and bitter person teaching my kids, awful.
What was her purpose in tweeting a mental health hotline as her phone number? Why would anyone do that?
There’s probably a regulation about being allowed to fire professors for certain kinds of bad behavior even if they’re not arrested for it. That’s why I think they could fire her for clogging the suicide line’s phone. Bad behavior is not protected by the First Amendment.
Tweets are down and she’s “on leave” I heard on radio.
It’s not special protections at all. It’s the 1st Amendment which prohibits government from interfering with free speech. In this case, the professor’s employer is the government. Private companies are free to interfere with their employee’s speech all they want.
If she’s not fired, hopefully she’ll be ostracized and shunned by her peers. But chances are, most of her peers agree with her, so that’s not likely.
It’s one thing to say X dead person was not admirable for these reasons and list them. Say your piece in a rational, reasoned way. State facts with attribution. I would not be outraged by that. This was just a hate mongering childish act.
When college students are punished for impolitic things they say or do, by government run colleges, to not punish the professors for similar things sends the wrong message. She may not be able to be fired, but some sort of sanction or reprimand is in order.
Regardless of whether one thinks she should be fired or not, one has to admit she isn’t terribly intelligent given today’s knowledge about social media and what it can do to one’s career - then add in the whole mental health line shenanigans/stupidity aspect. I wouldn’t want her as a professor with the severe lack of judgment she displayed. I like to believe professors are intelligent and can think!
I’d say the same no matter which first lady she criticized using the manner/wording she did.
@Muad_dib What makes you say that? Have you taken a poll of her peers?
“If she’s not fired, hopefully she’ll be ostracized and shunned by her peers. But chances are, most of her peers agree with her, so that’s not likely.”
We are talking about Fresno State here, not UC Berkeley or Reed College.
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Then it sounds like only civilian government employees get a free pass from their employer, because members of the military sure don’t. You can get disciplined, jailed, pay taken away, Article 15’d and booted out of the military for saying all sorts of things. 1st Amendment doesn’t prevent that.
I’m a government employee and civil service rules prohibit me from publicly supporting a political party or candidate. That includes donating to a campaign, having a yard sign, etc.
Not all civilian employees get a pass.