cowley co. college students punished over myspace blog?
[Editor's note: This is the 2,000th post to appear on evolution. Personally, I couldn't think of a better use for it.]
A couple of theater students at Cowley County Community College in Arkansas City, KS (which is usually called “Ark City” by Kansans) lost their places in a school production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night when the theater director stumbled across their comments on a MySpace blog, said the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) yesterday.
The Web site of the local paper, the Arkansas City Traveler, picked it up. From what this story says, it appears that this theater director, Scott MacLaughlin, kicked the two students, Connie Bucher and Justine Fernandez, off the production for their comments — and pulling one of them out of class to do so. The comments themselves seemed to be rather tame:
Bucher said she was surprised to receive an urgent call slip while in class about three weeks ago. The note said she needed to talk to MacLaughlin at once.
“When I got to his office, I was ambushed by two theater department professors and the director,” she said. “I had not been told what the meeting was about and when I got there, he pushed some paper toward me – my blog.”
Two blogs she wrote complained about two incidents in the theater and said she felt she might not have gotten a role in “Twelfth Night” if MacLaughlin had done the auditions by himself, she said. The theater incidents were felt to be unfair by several students, she said.
“The worst thing I said was that if something were to happen I’d be a bitch for the rest of the semester,” she said. “But it didn’t happen.”
MacLaughlin said he had discussed what action to take after reading the blogs with his supervisor and the vice-president of the college. They also met with Sue Saia, dean of student life.
“Based on what I saw in their blogs, the two students indicated they were pretty well unhappy with being in the theater,” Saia said. “I think the action taken on the blogging was appropriate. It didn’t take away their scholarships, it just took away activity privileges.”
Bucher said by the time she met with MacLaughlin on the blogs she no longer was angry about the incidents mentioned in them. She had just vented her feelings and got over it.
My detailed search of MySpace yielded nothing. If any of you out there know where to find this blog, I’d like to see it for myself. In fact, I’d like to have any information about this case you’d feel comfortable providing.
My initial reaction is that this theater director and his cohort, the dean of student life, are thin-skinned, petty jerks. That their first impulse was to punish students who published minor complaints about them is disturbing; but, as FIRE chronicles, it happens at American colleges all too often. If Mr MacLaughlin can’t take a little (insightful, it now appears) criticism, perhaps he ought not to be in the theater business.
Anyway, FIRE has taken up this case, and Ark City is a little too close to home, so I’ll be following it with great interest.
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