As a general rule of self-preservation, when maintaining a weblog, it is usually a good idea to refrain from using said weblog to threaten co-workers. Strangely enough, employers tend to frown on that sort of thing. Just ask Ms. Burch.
For the past two years, Amy Norah Burch, an undergraduate coordinator for the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, included a link to her personal website, www.AnnoyYourFriends.com, in her e-mail signature. The site, in turn, included a link to her online blog, which contained hundreds of posts about music, politics and her social life.
Sarah Champlin-Scharff, the social studies department administrator and Burch’s supervisor, refused to comment on Burch’s firing. Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson Robert P. Mitchell confirmed that Burch is no longer employed by Harvard.
But Burch said that a handful of unflattering references to her workplace interspersed throughout the site’s archives raised eyebrows at the department.
“Work is aggravating me,” she wrote in an April 28 entry on the publicly accessible journal, the contents of which have since been taken offline. “I am one shade lighter than homicidal today. I am two snotty e-mails from professors away from bombing the entire Harvard campus.”
By most accounts, Ms. Burch is a quiet, reasonable sort. The fact that she chose to vent her frustration in a highly public and very accessible manner may not have been the wisest of choices. Still, in this day and age, one simply does not lightly toss around implications of physical violence, no matter how gratuitous.
In one entry, Burch said she was “ready to get a shotgun and declare open season on all senior faculty members and students who dared cross [her].”
“It was definitely not my intention to slander anyone and I wasn’t trying to stir things up as they seemed to be implying,” she said. “I just sort of used the blog as a way to let off steam.”....
“Most of it is total heat of the moment stuff,” said Burch. “I’m not dangerous and I don’t wish anyone harm or malice and I don’t even dislike anybody. I just had momentary frustration and the blog was a good way to get it out so I can get on with things.”
Hey, we all need to vent our frustrations from time to time. That is hardly anything new. In our post-Columbine, post-9.11 world, venting publicly is nothing something that is lightly tolerated. It's just too bad Ms. Burch had to learn this lesson the hard way. Such is the stuff of which DUMB@$$E$ are made, eh?
