In the old days, it was enough for teachers to air their grievances in the mysterious smoke-filled teacher's lounge, where they gossiped about students and had coke-fueled sex orgies. But this is the Internet age, and kvetching in person just isn't enough anymore. That's why a Fresh Meadows teacher started the website Burn and Rot in Hell, a message board where visitors are encouraged to vent about everything from "sex" to "bad students" to "other stuff." It's healthy to blow off steam, but the wholesome administrators at St. Francis Prep School (Home of the Fightin' Swine Flu!) think the website is inappropriate, and they've suspended teacher Elizabeth Cucinotta without pay.
Cucinotta tells Fox 5, "I went to a priest and told him the name of the website on two occasions and I was not given any indication that it was going to be a problem." But just days after the site launched, the priests at the private school brought the hammer down and suspended her. In a statement, the school says, "Miss Cucinotta has been suspended pending an investigation for a potential violation of the school's mission and the teacher's obligation to fulfill that mission."
That mission, by the way, is "to enable all students to develop and broaden their spiritual, intellectual, creative, emotional, social, and physical abilities." So one might get why they're concerned about a teacher's website hosting such "burns" as "Creepy students who's goal in life is to get a teacher fired....EVEN AFTER THEY GRADUATED....you may be fooling everyone else....but I know your a crazy bitch. God, and you'll read this post because you ARE a stalker! CREEP! Burn and rot in hell!"
That comment, in the "bad students" section of BARIH, sounds not unlike Cucinotta's answer to Fox 5's question about what she has to say to the administrators who suspended her. "Burn and rot in hell," she told the reporter. One former student at the school tells us, "The school has a history of unfairly penalizing both students and faculty for seemingly extracurricular activities, and they don't always 'get' technology, they seem to be threatened by it." Gee, we can't imagine why the priests at St. Francis would be threatened by a website like Burn and Rot in Hell.
