<p>A college athlete claims she was kicked off the softball team after school officials said she posted thug rants on her Facebook page.
Caitlin Ortiz, 19, a star athlete at Molloy College, Long Island, lost her scholarship and is now suing the school.
She claims team coach and athletic director, Susan Cassidy-Lyke, and director of student affairs, Robert Houlihan, discriminated against her because she is Hispanic.</p>
<p>another lesson (this week) about posting (anything) online…this girl is not only supposed to be a role model to other students on her team, but also to future recruits for the softball team…</p>
<p>IMO, she doesn’t have a leg to stand on…white, black, hispanic, or purple and pink polka dotted…</p>
<p>will be curious to see how this one turns out; she should have “resigned” before this blew up in her face…</p>
<p>Shouldn’t the credibility of the threat matter though? Ortiz says “I’ll be home (‘if you want to come fight about it’)” which, while abrasive and poorly thought out, was not a direct threat of violence in my opinion because the impetus to start a physical altercation is still on the other student and their choice of whether or not to, after being offered an altercation, go to Ortiz’s residence and initiate a conflict.
As to the song lyrics, the idea that anyone would see a typo-ridden quote as an indication of a “thug team” is to me ridiculous. Quoting lyrics to express oneself is absurdly common on facebook, and most songs reference sex/drugs/alcohol in some way, so to hold this against a student seems ridiculous.
Suspending her scholarship for typing like an idiot would be a logical explanation :P, but to say that she gave the school a thug image or threatened another student is not supported by the facebook postings included in the article. As to her claim of racism, we can’t assess that with what information is included in the article, but the student that reported her for the song lyrics clearly had some sort of personal vendetta.</p>
<p>Even still, a “friend” can copy anything you post and send it to anyone and everyone… Don’t put anything on line that you don’t want to share with the world.</p>
<p>Another caution-- some students have privacy settings on their twitter accounts, but others can skim those tweets with a tool such as Tweetdeck.</p>
<p>Playing on a sport team is a privilege, not a right. Coach doesn’t want anyone (including recruits and the administration) to think that the softball team is a hard partying team. I get that. A good talking to by the coach, an apology by the player and perhaps a suspension might be in order. </p>
<p>The “threat,” in an of itself, sounds like verbal posturing on its face. But the fact that these girls were roommates and the other roommate felt threatened tells me that there could very well be something that’s gone on it the past that we’re not being told.</p>
<p>Doesn’t sound like a Hispanic thing going on as much as a socioeconomic cultural disconnect going on…assuming that the softball player is a street-savvy urban kid, what kind of school is Molloy College? If it’s a suburban, conservative, “values oriented” school full of “white kids,” I could definitely see a culture clash.</p>
<p>O.K. Not directly akin to this (it was not on a social media site) but I have heard of a song lyric case because prosecuted as a threat against a public servant . A voicemail was left on a public employee’s phone that was a rap song. The rapper was crudely and repeatedly explaining how he would kill the object of his disdain. That’s it. Indicted. Hasn’t gone to trial. Be careful out there folks.</p>
<p>Maybe they took away her scholarship because they found out she writes like a lazy third-grader. Any college would be embarrassed to have their students writing like that in a public forum.</p>
<p>Its funny, there was a thread on this very thing about a month ago here on CC…</p>
<p>I am a parent of a 15yo who HAD a FB page last summer… I took the time to peek at it just before the 2010-2011 school year started… and I am glad I did… the things that I saw her friends were posting were enough to make Mr Weiner blush… after 2 weeks of clicking around, and getting a good sense of what goes on… I had her delete her page… she a bit miffed(didnt dare express it though)… as I explained to her FB does not sustain life…</p>
<p>Ironically, I had the pleasure of chatting with a med school admissions counselor @ a universtiy in Boston a few months back…she was the only person in the office and picked up the phone… we chatted for about an hour… about many a topic! From education, child rearing, values, politics and yes, Facebook… she stated that MANY a med school applicant… with stellar MCAT scores, LORS, GPA’s, killer EC’s have been rejected from their school d/t their FB pages! This particular school had almost 8,000 applicants for 167 spots… and they visit every page… most applicants are not savvy enough to realize this fact… and this school, as well as many others, decline those who they feel will not represent the school in a complimentary way…</p>
<p>^ comments like these are silly. Facebook is a very large part of the way people (mostly young people) interact. I’m not entirely sure why it is so popular, but it is. That probably isn’t changing any time soon. To decry it as mindless and a total waste of time is shortsighted and plainly not true. </p>
<p>Every time the means of communication are radically altered, there is always an older, more conservative group which claims that the change is for the worse and that it is somehow less pure and less worthy. You are doing it to Facebook, but people did it about the printing press, the writing of literature in common vernacular, rather than Latin, etc. In the end, I think we mostly agree that none of those things destroyed culture, or wholly corrupted the youth. Facebook is just the latest iteration, and like those changes, it is not a bad thing.</p>
<p>So, a better way to state your complaints would be " I personally do not understand the appeal of Facebook" or something along those lines. That way you would avoid insulting the millions of people who enjoy Facebook and are also productive members of the world.</p>
Where’s the fun in that? Seriously, though, I do feel old… though I’m not so old, particularly w.r.t. Facebook.</p>
<p>Regarding why Facebook is popular… have you <em>talked</em> to college kids lately? “Mindless” isn’t the last word that comes to mind. Maybe a little constructive insulting is what people need. Thanks for the feedback, though.</p>