In light of recent announcements of budget cuts, a new Twitter account, @BSMTeacherProbs, surfaced on March 13, attacking the administration’s decision to lay off a number of teachers due to necessary budget cuts. Though the account went inactive the night of March 17, the tweets included specific details regarding the budget decisions to be made this week and even went so far as to tweet directly at students who have a substantial number of followers in the BSM community.
BSM administration is not angry so much as it is disappointed that the situation received such a public and critical reaction. “It’s unfortunate that it’s out there publicly. And I don’t care if people criticize me, but I’d rather that they just come in and do it to my face, because you’d hate to have some sort of a negative impact on our school community. People who work here are pretty passionate about this place. If they didn’t care about this place, they probably wouldn’t do something about this,” Dr. Bob Tift, BSM president, said.
As of now, no actions have been taken to track down the Twitter account’s administrator(s) because the administration’s attention is being focused on the difficult decisions to be made this week. “I just saw it this morning for the first time, so there’s nothing really to say yet because there hasn’t really been anything discussed about it yet,” said Mr. Steve Pohlen.
Although the account called for justice on the behalf of the teachers, some faculty members were not pleased with the Twitter account. “[It’s purpose] is to get out information to people to kind of rally around the teachers, and I just don’t know how effective it is….I think that this is extremely unprofessional,” Ms. Allison Frank said.
Because the account is public and contacted students directly, it caused commotion amongst the student body as well as the staff. Many students voiced negative reactions to the Twitter account.
Tift explained he would rather voice his disappointment in the action itself than punish the person(s) running the account. “I’d probably just tell them it’s counterproductive. I mean if the word gets out to the community that there’s problems at this school or we’re in a financial crisis–there’s turmoil–people who are prospective families may say ‘I don’t know if I want to go in there.’ And if the enrollment numbers were to go down, then we’re left with no choice but to make more cuts,” said Tift.
