Matthew Laurrie
Features Assignment Editor
Who says a model can’t also be a role model? The Department of Education in New York City certainly doesn’t think this is a possibility.
A high school guidance counselor was recently fired from her position after racy photos of her reappeared on the Internet seventeen years after they were taken, according to an Oct. 15 Huffington Post article. Tiffani Webb, who had worked in a New York City school district for more than twelve years, modeled in bikini and lingerie attire for two years, beginning when she was 18.
It’s completely unfair to have one’s past dictate their future. Life isn’t about the choices people make. Life is about how people learn from their experiences and use that knowledge to better themselves. Why should this guidance counselor be punished for something she did 17 years ago? I don’t believe she should be fired for something like this even if it happened a month ago. She didn’t do anything illegal or morally corrupt.
An unnamed chancellor on a committee evaluating the case said the photos demonstrate Webb’s lack of capacity to lead students, according to the same article.
“That behavior has a potentially adverse influence on her ability to counsel students and be regarded as a role model,” the committee member said.
Is this chancellor saying because Webb posed in a bikini in front of a camera, she is unable to be a leader who helps students in an educational setting? You have got to be kidding me. I refuse to believe that the very people who had a hand in Webb’s termination have never done anything in their past they regret.
Webb disclosed her former job to her employers before being hired in 1999. Despite some hold ups and investigation, she was permitted to work with students, according to an Oct. 9 New York Post article.
Webb didn’t physically harm anyone, she didn’t engage in an inappropriate relationship with a student and she didn’t fail to do her job – in fact, according to the New York Post article, she had an outstanding reputation as a professional in the school district. All she did was take some photos almost two decades ago.
According to the New York Post article, many of the photos are highly altered – sometimes Webb’s face is transposed onto another woman’s body. The article further explained Webb did not give consent or authorization for websites to use these images.
These images of Webb are not harming the students she counsels or the people she works with. Why should she lose out on her salary and position because prudish and puritanical big shots think this is inappropriate?
Firing Webb isn’t protecting students. If anything, it’s sending the message that what you do at a young age will command your livelihood later in life.
The city Department of Education needs to focus its attention on more pressing, serious matters. It should focus on ensuring all students enthusiastically participate in the classroom setting and teachers actively engage in the educational lives of their students.
It should not give any focus to what a guidance counselor did when she was eighteen.
