Kan. school defends decision to kick out students

[cory777]

Source: Associated Press

A junior college in suburban Kansas City is defending its decision to kick out four students who posed for photos with a human placenta.

One of the students, Doyle Byrnes, is seeking a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to force Johnson County Community College to reinstate her before classes resume Jan. 19. She had posted one of the photos on Facebook.

The school has said the students could seek readmission in the fall and finish the program a year later in May 2012. But Byrnes is getting married in August and had planned to move to Virginia with her husband and work there as a registered nurse.

Read more: http://www.salon.com/wires/us/2011/01/02/D9KGIBLG0_us_placenta_photo/index.html

---

Uncensored Activist News http://activistnews.blogspot.com

[DeadEyeDyck]

1. why would a human placenta want to have its picture

taken with student?

[ellenfl]

2. i don't get it. what exactly is the 'crime'? eom

[du_grad]

18. If this was at a hospital they would be in violation of HIPAA

http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/administrative/privacyrule/index.html

Anyone who works at a hospital (or in health care) nowadays is indoctrinated into privacy rules. You never ever EVER post anything regarding a patient, especially on Facebook.

If one violates HIPAA in their job at our hospital, they can be immediately terminated. I would suspect this is true all over the country. There is a sign coming in from our parking garage specifically stating that pictures should be limited to family ONLY - no other patients.

That being said, I would suspect that this was not emphasized in their school curriculum, as they go to different hospitals to train for different specialties (at least my daughter did - she graduated last December). This is pretty unprofessional.

I am not a nurse, but am a medical technologist with 36 years under my belt.

[ellenfl]

19. ah, thanks for the explanation. obviously i didn't consider the privacy issue. eom

[skepticscott]

3. And if they had been at

an anti-abortion protest, holding signs with photos of aborted fetuses, would they have received the same punishment? I doubt it.

[Moonwalk]

4. These are adults. What business is it of the school what they do in their free time?--

--especially if they're not doing anything that is a crime, impacts on the school and is part of their free-speech rights?

Take the school the court and make 'em pay!

[bhikkhu]

11. It wasn't their free time, and it wasn't their placenta

...so the college and the instructor certainly have a say in the whole mess, and have a right to apply their own written rules and policies to the incident. And of course the students have the write to a day in court, if they wish, to see that the laws were followed and that they weren't treated unfairly.

I find it hard to have much of an opinion about it. If I were a med student, I suppose it would be natural to try to lighten the sometimes grim lab atmosphere, handling living and dead tissue. On the other hand, imagine if you were an organ donor or considering donating your body to science; nobody really wants their bits and pieces to become the subject of merriment on the internet.

[Moonwalk]

17. I don't think a woman can donate her placenta to another woman....

And last I looked, organs that were donated didn't get handled in merriment. They get transferred right out of the donators body to whomever needs them. If, however, your point is that those intending to donate their body to science might not do that to thanks to this, then I'll agree. But then, bodies donated to science have been put in plastic and on display in museums. So, once again, I'm not so sure how offensive this would be to anyone planning that.

[Riftaxe]

5. It would be interesting if anyone had a link

that had more information to it. The article linked is factually pretty sparse :(

[laconicsax]

8. Try this one.

http://www.kansascity.com/2010/12/30/2551869_nursing-student-expelled-for-posting.html?storylink=omni_popular

Searching for http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1LAVF_enUS396US396&ie=UTF-8&q=kansas+city+junior+college+placenta">kansas city junior college placenta gives a lot more links that seem to mostly be to the story in the OP.

[Ian David]

6. Oh, come on... EVERYONE does it..

[mzteris]

7. more

The 22-year-old said she had a "momentary lapse in judgment" during the Nov. 10 nursing lab, conducted in a group with six other students.

But the dean at Johnson County Community College calls it a lesson hard learned, reported the Kansas City Star.

Court documents say a member of the lab group asked the instructor Amber Delphia for permission to photograph the placenta and share it with family and friends on Facebook.

According to court documents, Delphia said, "Oh, you girls" and didn't advise against taking the photo.

Four students were photographed with the anonymous organ. In the photo, Byrnes smiles while prodding the placenta in a tray.

She posted the picture to Facebook, where it was visible for about three hours until the instructor phoned her that evening asking her to remove the picture.

http://www.torontosun.com/news/weird/2011/01/02/16731796.html

[struggle4progress]

10. Link to picture of Byrnes with placenta

Law
Facebook photo op with placenta gets nursing student booted from JCCC
By Nadia Pflaum, Tue., Dec. 28 2010 @ 7:00AM
http://blogs.pitch.com/plog/2010/12/facebook_photo_op_with_placent.php

[struggle4progress]

9. JCCC probably doesn't want a reputation for offering nursing classes where the students

clown around with lab specimens: that kind of thing might make it harder for other program graduates to get jobs

[SheilaT]

12. The real issue seems to me to be that

the students were watched by the instructor taking the photographs, and at least one said something about posting it on Facebook. Granted, young people tend to put anything and everything on their Facebook page without any thoughts of what's appropriate or what the consequences might be, but expelling the students strikes me as absolute overkill. ESPECIALLY since the instructor saw the photos being taken, and the school apparently has no written policy in connection with this kind of thing.

On a personal note, I've attended Johnson County Community College (one of six schools I've attended) and my experience, with the exception of the creationist biology teacher, was mostly good.

[petronius]

13. It seems like the school was unprepared for this situation, and is swinging way too

far in the punitive direction to solve what seems to be a non-problem. At most, it seems like they should ask the students to delete the photos, and write a policy about cameras (if even that - I still don't see the big deal about a photo of an unidentifiable specimen).

I wonder if they're getting some sort of undisclosed pressure or expressions of displeasure from the lab that hosted the class, because I'm not seeing where anyone else has objected...

[uppityperson]

14. Seems very non-professional of the students, to do that during class

I understand why they were kicked out. If you are a nursing student, you don't do stupid things like this. Seriously. I also very well understand dark humor, but there is a difference between what you do in private and what you do in public.

I hope the students have learned this and will become more watchful of privacy issues.

Edited to add this bit from the story

Walsh had said she would support Byrnes if she sought readmission to the nursing school next fall, according to court documents. But Cohen said his client is engaged to be married in August and planned to move to Virginia with her husband and work there as a registered nurse.

That is why Byrnes is seeking a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to force the school to reinstate her before classes resume Jan. 19.

Cohen said his client’s career hangs in the balance.

“With this kind of black mark on her record, who knows whether she can enroll in another nursing school,” he said. “Would she be able to get a job?”

http://www.kansascity.com/2010/12/30/2551869_nursing-student-expelled-for-posting.html

The problem is NOT being punished but what her actions were. I agree that this is a black mark on her record. There should be some reaction to this, and this doesn't look like she's taking much responsibility for her actions. Indeed NOT a good thing for a potential health care person to have done.

[Anakin Skywalker]

15. Hey Dorothy! You are in Kansas!

[SemperEadem]

16. censorship...

what crime has been committed? Bad taste isn't a crime. Just another case of nanny-state adults and their knee jerk reaction to anything that isn't sanitized and disney-ized.

[Taverner]

20. Um - what's so wrong in posing with a placenta?

Other than too many 'P's' and not enough 'Q's'