Here is a fun instance of Stupid Administrator Tricks. An art professor at a New Jersey community college gets hauled in to talk to administration and security for posting a social media picture of his young daughter wearing a Game of Thrones t-shirt -- and then he's suspended:
Citing numerous concerns about their president’s commitment to shared governance, the faculty union at Bergen Community College in New Jersey voted “no confidence” in her leadership. They say they are being denied regular access to the president, that changes to the promotion and tenure committee violate their rights, and that at least one of their colleagues was forced into a bizarre situation over a "Game of Thrones" T-shirt....
Francis Schmidt, a professor of art and animation, is one such case.
By all accounts, including his own, Schmidt is a bit of an eccentric. The longtime professor posts cat pictures to social media and loves fantasy stories, especially HBO’s popular “Game of Thrones.”
So it came as no surprise to many of his Google+ contacts that he enthusiastically posted a picture of his young daughter doing yoga in a T-shirt with the new “Game of Thrones” season tagline in January, upon release of the trailer. The T-shirt reads, “I will take what is mine in fire and blood,” and Schmidt’s cat lurks in the photo background.
But one contact -- a dean -- who was notified automatically via Google that the picture had been posted apparently took it as a threat. In an email, Jim Miller, the college’s executive director for human resources, told Schmidt to meet with him and two other administrators immediately in light of the “threatening email.”
Eventually they briefly suspended him and made him talk to a shrink. Before he sicced his direwolf on them, or something.
It's a wild story all around. Professors obviously have a lot more labor protections than do workers in other jobs, but still, you have to be careful about who you make friends with on social media if they have any sort of power over you. You never know what sort of wacky stunt they might pull. Even if you're posting on Google +, where you can have a reasonable expectation that nobody will ever see it.
MAS. I suppose another title for this post could be "The Night Is Derp, And Full of Stupid."