……Not anymore, she doesn’t.
It turns out FSU doesn’t actually have a policy against faculty posting social media rants. And ex-FSU lecturer Deborah O’Connor wasn’t fired; as she told a Tallahassee newspaper, she was merely “encouraged” to resign. She portrays it as her decision: “I decided to resign because I didn’t think it was feasible to drag myself and Florida State through this kind of mud.”
I guess you could say that combining a racist rant against President Obama and Attorney General Holder with a homophobic slur against a gay stranger in New York qualifies as “mud.” It also might affect the feasibility of one’s employability in a public teaching position. Especially if you attempt to lend credibility to your rant by dragging your employer’s reputation into the conversation.
As a lawyer, I want to point out a couple things. First, we have a constitutional right to free speech in this country, but employment is normally dependent on staying in your employer’s good graces. In other words, you can say anything and won’t go to jail for it, but you might lose your job. I always have trouble getting people to understand the First Amendment only applies to the government and doesn’t prevent employers from regulating the speech of their employees insofar as continued employment goes.
Second, people shouldn’t expect their public speech to be private. In particular, I’m always amazed by how many people write stuff in emails that no person in his right mind would want his boss, his wife, or hostile lawyers to see. THE INTERNET IS NOT PRIVATE!!! It’s as public as anything possible can be. I’m also shocked by how many IT professionals get caught watching porn on their office computers. You know, people who are paid by their employers to catch other employees doing that. Of course, nobody is going to tell you that websites such as https://babestation.com/our-babes/hannah-claydon are not heavily appealing for men, especially when some of the biggest stars and models are doing their thing, but it puts their job in an untenable position when they are viewing this content at work. The employer has no choice but to fire in this situation, otherwise it opens itself up to the possibility of huge sexual harassment payouts for tolerating what lawyers euphemistically term a “hostile work environment.”
Third, not everything qualifies as academic discourse. In fact, a lot of stuff doesn’t. This stuff, for example. We could argue all day that universities shouldn’t discipline teaching staff for posting racist and homophobic rants in social media, on free speech and academic freedom grounds, to which I would respond that Ms. O’Connor wasn’t disciplined by FSU for doing that. She voluntarily resigned, remember? And you’ll voluntarily resign, too, if you work in academia and get caught doing the same thing. We’re all friends here, and in our fuzzy-sweater work environment, these things are worked out by mutual consensus.
Like many people who get caught up in the passions of political argument and become slightly overwrought, ex-lecturer O’Connor subsequently regretted her rant. But to no avail. As they say, the internet is forever; by the time she erased her posts, screen captures had already been made. The New York guy’s girlfriend sent them to newspapers, FSU’s president, and FSU trustees. There wasn’t much her department head could do to help her retrieve the situation, even if he was a friend and sympathizer.
Her timing wasn’t all that great, either. Five local sheriff’s deputies had just been suspended from their jobs for doing approximately the same thing; which, of course, was splashed all over the news media where O’Connor worked and lived. Some people either don’t read newspapers or don’t learn anything from reading them.
I almost feel sorry for O’Connor. She’s had this job since 1995. Her livelihood is gone, and with her name and photo splashed all over the national news, her prospects of obtaining other professional employment don’t look real good. And millions of strangers now think she’s a flaming a–hole. We’re all human and imperfect, and any of us could yield to the same impulses and end up in the same fix, if we’re not careful. So, it’s a good idea to be careful and think before you leap.
There’s always Jesus. He forgives everything, no matter how bad it is. When you have nothing else left — no job, no friends, no self-respect — you can still turn to Jesus. As they say, Jesus saves. Yes, when you’ve really and truly f–ked up, it’s time to go to Jesus. At least, that’s what I was taught in the military.
