Teacher who was suspended for facetiously threatening on Facebook to kill students gets her job back

We'd previously reported on the story of a sociology prof who posted a couple of tongue-in-check messages on Facebook expressing that she'd “had a good day today, DIDN’T want to kill even one student :-). Now Friday was a different story.” 

When a student reported her message (which the prof assumed was private until Facebook unilaterally changed the privacy settings for all users) to administrators, she was placed on leave.

The Chronicle of Higher Ed is reporting that the prof in question was recently reinstated:

Though [she] said her co-workers have been either welcoming or distant, a few of her students have been blatantly opposed to her return. She said on her first day back, three of her students "stormed out" of class, complained to the department chair and administrators, and called the media. After that, campus police officers were posted outside her classroom.

Notwithstanding her students' response, the professor in question felt that the school overreacted to her facetious Facebook messages.

[The professor] still holds that the "radically extreme response" to her Facebook posts was a result of a racial-harassment complaint she filed the month before her suspension, and of an essay she wrote for The Chronicle Review in 2008 that described some of the challenges black faculty members face.

The Facebook comments, Ms. Gadsden said, were intended only for family and friends. She said that she wishes she had never started an account, and that she got legal advice not to take it down at this point.

"I wish the administration had looked at the bigger picture," she said. "It was a bad joke, but it was a joke."

You can read the rest here.

(jbl)