There is a fine line that has yet to be determined when it comes to blogs, social networking and other web 2.0 tools. Case in point, this post from Podcasting News:
Last year, she was dismissed from the student teaching program at a nearby high school and denied her teaching credential after the school staff came across her photograph on her MySpace profile. She filed a lawsuit in April this year in federal court in Philadelphia contending that her rights to free expression under the First Amendment had been violated. No trial date has been set.
Her photo, preserved at the “Wired Campus” blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education, turns out to be surprisingly innocuous. In a head shot snapped at a costume party, Ms. Snyder, with a pirate’s hat perched atop her head, sips from a large plastic cup whose contents cannot be seen. When posting the photo, she fatefully captioned her self-portrait “drunken pirate,” though whether she was serious can’t be determined by looking at the photo.
If you follow the link you can see the picture which is best described as innocuous. It is hard to imagine she lost her job over this photo, but she was a teacher which adds a twist. I’m still undecided on which way to view the use of social networking sites in background verifications.