OhMuhGourd
New Member
- Jurisdiction
- Kansas
If I was unfairly terminated by an on campus job through my university, graduated & received my degree, and decided to send a profanity laden email to the person who fired me, their higher up (who happens to be the Vice President for Student Life), and the person whose complaint resulted in me getting fired, could my degree be rescinded?
Some background: I like to make name puns out of people's names and pictures to go with them, and send it to them. For example, if somebody named John Smith had a picture of their face somewhere online, I could shop it onto a picture of the sun rising such that their face was in the center of the sun and send it to them along with the message "Dawn Smith".
I had done this with my co-workers and with the boss who fired me to good times and laughter all around. All such communications were safe-for-work. There was this one woman who came into the gym (the work place was an on-campus gym) often, almost always wearing significantly shorter shorts (practically panties) than other women, sometimes super skin-tight yoga pants. I build good rapport with this woman, and we exchanged smiles with dilated pupils several times, even if we never engaged in small talk.
We also go to the same small campus size college, as is the rule to even use the on-campus gym except in very rare cases, and have several mutual friends on Facebook, on which she has a public profile (you can toggle settings to make your profile private or certain facets of it private). I include those two pieces of information to show that even though I had access to her name as part of my job (student ID cards required to access the gym), both the fact that we go to the same small-campus college (people talk) and the fact that we have many mutual friends on Facebook (Facebook has 'people you may know' and 'find friends' features that favor people you have many mutual friends with) mean that she has no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding her name (and because her profile was public with public pictures, her face).
The university's email system (Microsoft Outlook) is such that you don't need to know somebody's exact email address to email them, because there is a suggestion drop-down list. This could be ambiguous if you knew the name, but not the email, of the most common named person on campus (perhaps even a John Smith). In the case of this woman, her name is so unique that it was literally the only suggestion on the drop down list.
One day, I send her an email with some safe-for-work name puns and pictures as I had with my co-workers and boss. This woman has the audacity to forward the email to my boss saying that she 'felt violated'; 'not safe going back to the gym without a friend in tow'; and that it was 'unacceptable' for me to do what I did. To my surprise, my boss fires me over it after asking me irrelevant questions like whether I had engaged in small talk with this woman, and insulting me by suggesting I offer up the names of any other non-co-workers I had sent such emails to so that she (my boss) could get offended on their behalf and apologize on my behalf (I'm not sorry and don't care about hyper-sensitive feelings of people I share my wholesome, quality humor with).
This woman also informs, but does not claim violations of the student conduct code (probably because there aren't any), to my boss' boss, the vice president of student life. He demands a sit down and begs the question of why I think my behavior is acceptable, giving crappy reasons to why she (the woman) might think my behavior is unacceptable "People don't like their faces on things.", "We can't help how people feel", cry me a river.
If I were to cuss all three of them out in a mass email from a non-school email after I get my degree (I was the longest working student employee at the time of my termination. I was the most active during my shifts. I am entitled to good recommendations and good attitudes from my boss and my boss' boss for those and other reasons, and not the cold shoulder and nastiness I have received.), could my degree be rescinded? Could I be sued for intentional infliction of emotional distress? Could I face criminal charges?
I ask if I could face criminal charges because, back in high school, I had a different complaint for a different reason filed against me and did two days in ISS, and the school counsellor handling it (who to the best of my knowledge had no law degree), told me that if I tried to talk to the person filing the complaint about it, I would be arrested and charged with witness intimidation. Could've been pulling my leg, but I'm also no lawyer.
Some background: I like to make name puns out of people's names and pictures to go with them, and send it to them. For example, if somebody named John Smith had a picture of their face somewhere online, I could shop it onto a picture of the sun rising such that their face was in the center of the sun and send it to them along with the message "Dawn Smith".
I had done this with my co-workers and with the boss who fired me to good times and laughter all around. All such communications were safe-for-work. There was this one woman who came into the gym (the work place was an on-campus gym) often, almost always wearing significantly shorter shorts (practically panties) than other women, sometimes super skin-tight yoga pants. I build good rapport with this woman, and we exchanged smiles with dilated pupils several times, even if we never engaged in small talk.
We also go to the same small campus size college, as is the rule to even use the on-campus gym except in very rare cases, and have several mutual friends on Facebook, on which she has a public profile (you can toggle settings to make your profile private or certain facets of it private). I include those two pieces of information to show that even though I had access to her name as part of my job (student ID cards required to access the gym), both the fact that we go to the same small-campus college (people talk) and the fact that we have many mutual friends on Facebook (Facebook has 'people you may know' and 'find friends' features that favor people you have many mutual friends with) mean that she has no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding her name (and because her profile was public with public pictures, her face).
The university's email system (Microsoft Outlook) is such that you don't need to know somebody's exact email address to email them, because there is a suggestion drop-down list. This could be ambiguous if you knew the name, but not the email, of the most common named person on campus (perhaps even a John Smith). In the case of this woman, her name is so unique that it was literally the only suggestion on the drop down list.
One day, I send her an email with some safe-for-work name puns and pictures as I had with my co-workers and boss. This woman has the audacity to forward the email to my boss saying that she 'felt violated'; 'not safe going back to the gym without a friend in tow'; and that it was 'unacceptable' for me to do what I did. To my surprise, my boss fires me over it after asking me irrelevant questions like whether I had engaged in small talk with this woman, and insulting me by suggesting I offer up the names of any other non-co-workers I had sent such emails to so that she (my boss) could get offended on their behalf and apologize on my behalf (I'm not sorry and don't care about hyper-sensitive feelings of people I share my wholesome, quality humor with).
This woman also informs, but does not claim violations of the student conduct code (probably because there aren't any), to my boss' boss, the vice president of student life. He demands a sit down and begs the question of why I think my behavior is acceptable, giving crappy reasons to why she (the woman) might think my behavior is unacceptable "People don't like their faces on things.", "We can't help how people feel", cry me a river.
If I were to cuss all three of them out in a mass email from a non-school email after I get my degree (I was the longest working student employee at the time of my termination. I was the most active during my shifts. I am entitled to good recommendations and good attitudes from my boss and my boss' boss for those and other reasons, and not the cold shoulder and nastiness I have received.), could my degree be rescinded? Could I be sued for intentional infliction of emotional distress? Could I face criminal charges?
I ask if I could face criminal charges because, back in high school, I had a different complaint for a different reason filed against me and did two days in ISS, and the school counsellor handling it (who to the best of my knowledge had no law degree), told me that if I tried to talk to the person filing the complaint about it, I would be arrested and charged with witness intimidation. Could've been pulling my leg, but I'm also no lawyer.
