In this week’s print edition of the Knight Errant, the Knight Errant staff included a staff editorial thanking teachers for their dedication to the BSM community amidst budget cuts for the next school year. But as the discussion of the impact of these budget cuts continues to spread throughout the school, someone has spoken out on another medium: Twitter. Although the Twitter account has now shut down, the BSM Teachers Twitter, @BSMTeacherProbs, was inappropriate for both students and teachers and placed the entire school community in a bad light.
The BSM Teachers Twitter account was an extremely unprofessional way to discuss questions with the budget. While whoever created this Twitter was exercising his or her rights of free speech, the anonymity of the Twitter account reduced credibility to his or her argument. It was not even clear whether a student, teacher, or even parent created this account, making it hard to give any basis to the argument at hand.
In order to advocate their position, the BSM Teachers Twitter account began tweeting at and following students, encouraging them to “support their teachers.” This method put specific students in a very uncomfortable position, singling them out and pushing them to take a position on an issue over social media. While students do support teachers, many feel anxious about supporting such a vocal account and should not feel forced to support this account to show their respect to teachers.
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Even just by placing their concerns on Twitter, a social media network, this Twitter account moved away from legitimate discussion and into simple complaints. Bluntly attacking administration in direct tweets and hashtags didn’t do anything to solve the problem at hand. It instead hurt the credibility of the entire staff by speaking “on behalf of” all of the teachers with these words. No matter a personal belief on a policy change, the administration is still in charge of the school and they deserve respect even during argumentation.
Many are upset about the changes for faculty and staff next year due to the budget cuts, but there are much better ways that this issue could be discussed. Writing to the administration or even writing a letter to the editor to our own Knight Errant would be a much more effective way to allow teachers’ voices to be heard while still maintaining legitimacy. As proven by our staff editorial, we do care about next year’s changes, and an inappropriate Twitter didn’t help persuade students any further.
