Day: May 14, 2015

Draw the Line


OK, dating myself here, but I can remember how “cool” it was to sneak up behind someone getting their picture taken and use your fingers to put “rabbit ears” on their head just as the picture was being taken.

Time marches on and we all laughed when a camera image depicted something unintentional happening in the background of the picture.  On the internet, to help out, you’ll see advice like “share when you see it” or to help the cause arrows or circles highlight it so that you don’t miss it.

And there’s the concept of photobombing where you just happen to step into a regular picture to enjoy your 30 seconds of fame.

Now the opportunity for a little notoriety has escalated.

As a teacher, I recall being in the main office and hearing the shouting during a meeting between my principal and a parent.  In our area, students had two major choices for secondary school education.  One was to go to our public school and the other was to be bused to the other side of the county to attend the Catholic school.  It was interesting to see the animosity from kids who grew up, played together, and then went separate ways for secondary school.  They became “true to their school” and it became amplified when the schools would play at sporting events.  At the incident in question, it was just a regular hockey game, not even between the two schools.  But, the students were wearing school jackets and somehow this led to a fight.  The student was being disciplined in the name of disrespecting the school and the parents were in to complain that this didn’t happen at school, or on school time, and so the principal had no reason for the discipline.  They knew “their rights”.

So, we fast forward to this week and the announcement that a Hydro One employee was fired for his actions.

It’s important to read that such actions could rise to the level of being illegal as well as being incredibly offensive.  While I’m sure that this wasn’t the intent, the words themselves describe an assault and should be treated as such.

At what point does being cute and fun become illegal and offensive?  I think that it’s easy to see that rabbit ears can be cute and that the actions at the Toronto FC game should be offensive to all.  Do we have to pass over common sense and let the laws tell us what can and can’t be done?

Whatever happened to that little voice in the back of your head that says “this is wrong”?

OTR Links 05/14/2015


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.