Robert Zellner, a biology teacher at a Wisconsin high school, and Cedarburg Education Association's union president, is finding out the hard way that breaking the rules on surfing for porn is enough to get you fired no matter what else might be involved.
Zellner was fired for shutting off “safe search” in Google Image Search on a school computer and searching for “blonde”. He viewed two pages of pornographic thumbnail images for a total of 67 seconds, but that's all it took.
Zellner doesn't dispute that he did this. In fact, he originally told school administrators that he did it to demonstrate that the school needed something far more difficult to crack, in this age of computer-savvy students. But Zellner says if it weren't for his criticism of his employer, they wouldn't have discharged him.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says that because Zellner knowingly violated the policy, the school had the right to dismiss him regardless of any other issue.
Zellner was fired for shutting off “safe search” in Google Image Search on a school computer and searching for “blonde”. He viewed two pages of pornographic thumbnail images for a total of 67 seconds, but that's all it took.
Zellner doesn't dispute that he did this. In fact, he originally told school administrators that he did it to demonstrate that the school needed something far more difficult to crack, in this age of computer-savvy students. But Zellner says if it weren't for his criticism of his employer, they wouldn't have discharged him.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says that because Zellner knowingly violated the policy, the school had the right to dismiss him regardless of any other issue.
He has a point the search is too easy to get through if thats all it took, but I highly doubt that is the point he was trying to make ahead of time, the proper channel may have been to prove it in some kind of meeting. Nope instead he was trying to get his rocks off in a little over a minute, couldnt get through the 6 hour work day.