It seems that the attacks on teachers for this behavior are a symptom of the general disrespect for educators. It may have happened (but I haven't heard of doctors) counselors, nurses, psychologists or librarians being subject to this level of scrutiny.

...as long as you also terminate all those coffee addicts who flaunt their addiction with coffee cups in the lounge.

And all those whose pushers are doctors and whose poison is distributed by pharmacists.

And those with sugar addictions.

And on and on.

I think it's time to photograph those who denied the woman her degree and capture them with coffee and likker.

And refund her tuition and pay her for the four years she wasted pursuing that degree.

I am a mother of two who works with the schools and I support the choice of this young teacher to post legal pictures of herself on the web. If she has passed her courses, earned the support of her teachers and paid her tuition, I don't think the school has a legal right to change her status and deny her the degree she has worked for and paid for. They had a legal contract, she paid them for her course of study, she has broken no laws, if her story is solid, then she should win not only the cost of her schooling back, but compensation for damages and possible loss of earnings.

As Americans we have the right to make legal choices. Our choices should not be dictated by employers, or the political, educational, or religious communities. Pictures like this may tarnish a reputation but unless she signed a contract stating that she could not drink alcohol during her course of study, or a morals clause in her student contract that states that alcohol violates that signed contract the school has no legal standing. And at this point, they have done more harm to her than she has done to them, so in my opinion, they owe her.

It wouldn't have kept her from being an attorney!

Of course, that may say more about lawyers than it does about schoolteachers....

You write:

But for fear of harming the children -- whom parents hope will not want to one day have such fun -- adults are usually encouraged to keep such things behind closed doors.

The parenthetical phrase should be: "who parents hope will not want to one day have such fun."

How you can tell: rephrase this as a straightforward sentence. "Parents hope they [not *them] will not want to one day have such fun." They -> who; them -> whom.

Sorry to be a prig, but I'm going to keep pointing this out until Salon writers get it right!

The school will lose the lawsuit. If this woman was not doing anything illegal or even immoral (drunken pirate?), then they have no cause to deny license. This is a very extreme reaction and it suggests that someone on the faculty must have some deeper problem with this young woman. Obviously, garnering high performance reviews undermines the argument that this young woman was a poor teacher. If by some means this woman was getting excellent evals but her performance was terrible, that suggests a problem at the university more than the student.

Make 'em walk the plank!

This is a truly appalling case of bureaucratic overreaching. What is even more appalling is that the school is concocting a story of her being a poor teacher to cover-up their own mistake. This means that the university will spend money on lawyers and a settlement that should go into facilities, salaries, and financial aid.

Maddening.

Somewhere out there, waiting in Parentland, are people who would try to have a teacher fired from a teaching position for that photo. I kid you not. They are out there, those Puritans*, and she might have suffered their predations years into her teaching career. I remember sitting at a swim meet years ago and hearing one mother tell another how she had had to take her children home from a Little League barbecue because "some of the dads were drinking beer *in front of the children*". The swim coach got fired from that club (same mom was the instigator) because one of the girls saw up the leg of his shorts when he crouched down to give instruction.

*You know they weren't persecuted and sent off in the Mayflower on account of their religion. They were sent away for being a pain in the ass.

There are people whose ignoble purpose is to be offended. They believe that they're doing God's will. Now, just imagine them in Heaven. They'd catch a peek up Jesus's robes and they'd be tattling on him. God wouldn't seem godly enough and they'd start clucking about that. One day, they'd look around and realize that their deities were gone. God and company would have fled to Hell to hang with their old pal, Satan.

...and Mr. Goodbar is a Hershey product, demonstrating her Pennsylvania state pride. It may have cost her a diploma, but I bet Obama and Hillary are both looking at the picture and saying "Now why didn't I think of that?"

Why doesn't the school also fire her for theft? She claimed to be a drunken pirate!

It's hard to tell with a single snapshot how many sheets she was to the wind. It wouldn't have surprised me if the glass was loaded with Dr. Pepper. Very likely, someone snapped that picture of her with their pocket camera, and emailed it to her. She posted it on her MySpace page, and gave it what she thought was a funny caption.

As others pointed out, she did absolutely nothing that was illegal or even of morally questionable value.

And, school systems want to know why they can't find good teachers.

With so many school districts having difficulty finding people who want to teach how smart is it for institutions to engage in these kinds of stupid, punitive overreactions?

Since the vast majority of college kids these days are likely to have such pix on their web pages are we soon going to end up with no new teachers actually entering the labor pool?