In Defense of the Editor Who Reported Teacher’s Dirty Net Comments

The person (whoever it was) who posted from the school has resigned. I don’t object to that. The terms of service make it clear that the paper will exercise editorial control over what is actually displayed in the forum, and may ban you if you post things they find objectionable. I don’t object to that. But this staff member at the paper chose to reveal identifying information (ip address and precise access time) to the school administration along with the message posted. I would expect that if posting to 4chan.org; I do *not* expect it when posting to a newspaper. While a random posting to a newspaper comments forum may not trigger the full fledged “protection of anonymous sources” behavior, I DO expect newspapers to be sensitive to this sort of thing. If I were the newspaper’s manager, I would discipline the offending staff member. If I were a local citizen, my opinion of my newspaper’s professionalism would go down.

Does anyone think that it’s appropriate to post offensive things on the internet while at work and on work computers regardless of whether the person is on a break or at lunch?

I don’t blame the person that called the school, I’m sure they assumed it was a student.

>As a teacher, you have to think about what a student sees if he or she is standing behind you in the school.

See, schools have rooms that students are not allowed in. And in these rooms they can put computers, otherwise every kid could see every test as it was being written. I am going to go out on a limb and suggest he was in one of those.

Yeah, he must have been in one of those, or it would have been a student reporting him, although even students know you don’t tattle when your feelings are hurt.

A vulgar word. Really? Is there any adult alive that has not heard every “bad word” so many times these days that they lose all impact? The only thing that is vulgar here is the idea that some words are still vulgar.

Greenbaum is a baby and his actions are not to be commended in any way. If he was my employee he would be cleaning out his desk under the watch of security.

It is hard to believe *this* article was written by the same jeannesager who lauded the “journalistic integrity” of students whose school paper had been shut down for “being too honest.” *That* article was spot-on. This article seems to be written by jeannesager’s evil doppelgänger.

In terms of the facts, that it was a teacher isn’t known, nor is it relevant. The paper’s privacy policy was violated. Greenbaum makes claims about blocking the school’s from accessing the newspaper that have no technical basis (and someone whose profession is in technology should know this). And even if it hadn’t been against the privacy policy, even if it had been a problem with an IP, it seems that this was the one-and-only time Greenbaum engaged in this sort of witch-hunt.

Maybe this whole thing is an exercise by Kurt Greenbaum, a made-up social experiment. Let’s hope so, because otherwise, someone has lost his or her job and Greenbaum is gloating over it. Losing one’s job is a serious, serious thing.

Not to mention, Greenbaum repeatedly has used the words “teab***er” and “teab***ing” in his columns. Why does he get to use dirty words, but his commenters can’t?