Drunken Pirate- Myspace Lawsuit

"APRIL 26--A Pennsylvania woman claims that her teaching career has been derailed by college administrators who unfairly disciplined her over a MySpace photo that shows her wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a plastic cup. In a federal lawsuit, Stacy Snyder charges that Millersville University brass accused her of promoting underage drinking after they discovered her MySpace photo, which was captioned "Drunken Pirate." The picture from Snyder's MySpace page was snapped at a costume party outside school hours. In her complaint, Snyder, a 25-year-old single mother of two, says that Millersville officials discovered the image last May, while she was a senior working as a student-teacher at Conestoga Valley High School. A university official told her that the photo was "unprofessional" and could have offended her students if they accessed her MySpace page. At the time the "Drunken Pirate" photo was taken, Snyder was of legal age to drink, though her lawsuit notes that the photo "does not show the cup's contents."
Although I just recently completed a research paper on Facebook and Myspace in relation to privacy and how having a profile lowers your right to privacy, I find this example to be an extreme case. I could see if the user was underage and had a beer bottle in her hand, but she is of legal drinking age, and the contents of her drink are not visible. While the caption is a stretch, the picture in itself should not be enough for the school to deny Snyder her teaching degree. While the picture may not be "professional" in the eyes of her school, she has not broken any laws, and they have no right to deny her a degree. I think that there are so many other cases where a users picture is outright unacceptable and they are not losing their jobs or college degrees. Snyder is the unfortunate user that is going to set the example for other users, and bring attention to the fact that administrators, potential employers have access to their social network profiles. While users on mypsace do have a lowered expectation of privacy in the information that they post online, Snyder does not need to be made into the poster child of that lowered expectation on the Internet. I hope that Snyder is awarded her teaching degree as she deserves, because the fact that her school is withholding her degree is unconstitutional.