This may not be biggest deal in the overall scheme of things, but yet another young person (I know, young is relative) has been forced to leave a job due to past tweets.
Alexi McCammond was one week away from taking over as editor of Teen Vogue but resigned because various controversies from offensive tweets and videos just would not go away. We can debate just how much a 17-year-old should be made to pay for being dumb or simply being ignorant, but staffers at Teen Vogue pointed out that their magazine is based on elevating the ideas and knowledge of the young and that ignoring old tweets would be hypocritical.
Two thoughts: Ms. McCammond will find a new gig and she is clearly talented. I hope she will be OK, though chastened by her exposure of being insensitive some years ago. She is more enlightened now -- as is her boyfriend, who was in the news when he had to resign as a White House staffer due to sexist threats against a woman.
That couple must be having some interesting conversations over dinner.
My second thought is that we all need to more fully comprehend that what is shouted into the cesspool of the Internet (of course, THIS blog is an exception) never goes away. There are companies that collect EVERYTHING, just in case, so simply deleting something stupid from your junior year of high school isn't going to save you.
Schools don't pay much attention to ethics -- they are more comfortable with clear rules and pressuring kids to conform to sometimes nutty standards -- but they SHOULD do more with ethics. Schools are pretty good at highlighting the perils of illegal actions, but most of the issues we see today are ethical, not legal.
Ms. McCammond did not violate any laws. She made mistakes, as kids often do.
My advice to people is to let their more passionate tweets sit for awhile before posting. Then, when in doubt, use the most powerful editing tool we possess: hit the DELETE key.
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