FSU Teacher Resigns After Hate-Filled Facebook Posts
A teacher at Florida State University College of Business has resigned after her ranting, hate-filled comments in response to a post on Facebook went public earlier this week.
Deborah O’Connor, a senior lecturer, responded to a post by Colin Lively about U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to have the Justice Department investigate the recent police shooting death of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old Ohio youth, for brandishing a toy gun.
“YOU elected POTUS, Holder et al. And they are supposed to represent all Americans, not just blacks. Why don’t these a** clowns insert themselves into their stories?” the teacher wrote in the first of 17 increasingly venomous comments she made to the post.
After Lively and others responded to her comment, O’Conner went on a rant.
“Take your Northern fagoot [sic] elitism and shove it up your a**,” she wrote. “You are an intellectual fraud, just like your Messiah. Obama has single-handedly turned our once great society into a Ghetto Culture, rivaling that of Europe. France is almost a war because of his filthy rodent Muslims who are attacking Native Frenchmen and women.”
“I teach at a University, you a**hole,” she continued. “What do you do?”
After learning that Lively was gay and a consultant in a the beauty industry, O’Conner replied, “I’m signing off now. I don’t talk to you people.”
The teacher deleted the comments, but not before they were captured by one of Lively’s friends, Susan Sharpe, who emailed them to FSU and city of Tallahassee officials. She also provided them to Folio Weekly, a Jacksonville, Florida, news website, which reported on Wednesday that the teacher had asked FSU in her resignation letter if there was a chance her comments could be “suppressed to minimize further injury to my reputation.”
“I usually give people a pass,” Sharpe wrote in an email to FSU President John Thrasher, “but once I saw that she had a position of responsibility teaching our children, that’s what put me over the edge. My thought is that when you are a teacher you are held to a higher standard.”
Lively told WCNC that he was amused by her comments at first, but became concerned when her hatred escalated.
“I’m surprised her employers weren’t aware of her and hadn’t done something about it,” he said. “I feel very bad for any woman who carries that kind of rage inside her heart. I feel very bad and sorry for her.”
O’Connor resigned her position with FSU over the weekend, telling the Tallahassee Democrat that she was embarrassed by the entire incident.
“I’ve learned my lesson about Facebook,” she said. “Let’s just leave it at that. I decided to resign because I didn’t think it was feasible to drag myself and Florida State through this kind of mud.”
FSU officials have yet to comment to the incident, other than to confirm that there are no rules concerning employees’ use of social media.
Another social media gaffe by a school faculty member made the news recently, when the Inquisitr reported a high school assistant principal shared a picture with a racial caption on Twitter, causing students to protest and walk out.
[Image via WCNC]
