Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Ethnography Results – Week 7


There was just one interesting story again this week.  But it’s about accusations of witchcraft in the TSA.  This is good enough for just one story.

Commenting and Posting
Nothing to note here.

The Atheism Category
This woman working for the TSA was fired for being a Wiccan.  Well, not exactly.  What really happened was a fellow coworker accused her of casting a spell on her car and she was afraid she was in danger from it.  This other woman filed a complaint about it and eventually got her fired.  The woman who was fired had also complained about lax security measures in the airport, and this was listed as another reason for being fired.  She explained that after the spell-casting accusation, the other people she worked with wouldn’t help her with anything and essentially ignored.  Her upper management requested that she formally explain her beliefs.  This request was made before she got fired.  She refused on the grounds that a Christian or Jewish employee would never have to do the same thing.

This entire situation is completely ridiculous to me.  And I am not talking about the woman who practices Wicca.  So what if she does.  That is her personal preference.  This was clearly religious discrimination, and she did actually file a formal complaint about it.  She lost the first time probably because she was representing herself.  But she has filed an appeal and has a lawyer this time.  I honestly hope she wins.  I don’t care if there were other reasons for her being fired.  She was noted as being a great employee, and none of this started until some person accused her of witchcraft.  To me, this seems similar to firing or treating someone differently due to the color of their skin.  Someone’s outlandish accusation got this woman fired, and she deserves some kind of retribution.

Wrap-up and Plans for Next Week
I’ll admit I never knew much about Wicca before checking out this article.  I thought some of it had to do with witchcraft, but even if it did I never believed any of that stuff could be real.  The woman explained that for her, it is about appreciating nature and is similar to Native Americans and their religious beliefs.  This might not be the same for all Wiccans, but that still doesn’t give someone the right to discriminate.  Well, technically they can do whatever they want, but there should be consequences for such intolerant behavior.

For next week, I am hoping for more good stories like this one.  I would also like to have more than one that seems interesting.  This is still great information though.  And as for the commenting patterns of users, I think we are all planning to compile that data after the study is done.  We have not forgotten about it, but we just haven’t done as much with it as we had hoped to.

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