Jeremiah McKinney
Staff Reporter
It is a rare thing to find your teacher on social media, but what about finding an account dedicated to taking pictures of said teacher? To some this is innocent fun, and to others it can be seen as a gross invasion of privacy. How did two Ironwood students (and a few other friends) make this a small background trend in the Peoria Unified School District?
It all started in early 2019. On January 9th, Robert “Bobby” Rickard made an Instagram account titled jon_pasinski_fan_page. With this account, Bobby would post pictures he took of his favorite teacher: Mr. Pasinski. Bobby chose Mr. Pasinski because, “he was easy to get pictures of and was okay with a little bit. He found it a little weird, but everyone found it funny; students and teachers.”
Dozens of pictures were taken of Mr. Pasinski, who declined to comment on this story, and many people posted on this fan page. “Any time I saw Pasinski and had an opportunity for pictures, we got them. And yes, we got them; it wasn’t just me. There were at least six people, true fans, that would send in photos to the fan page.” Enter Cayden Brown, or what he prefers: simply Cayden.
Cayden was the owner of jon_pasinski_fan_page after Bobby gave it to him. He and Bobby worked together to get more and more photos of their muse. However, all good things must come to an end. According to Cayden, after about a year of running the fan page, in early February of 2020, “the district board had it shut down because other people had tried to do the same thing and it had become a bigger deal than what it actually was.” Allegedly, the district had found about 35 similar fan pages across thirteen separate high schools in the Peoria Unified School District. Bobby added that “someone had a [Mr.] Newton fan page running for a week, but it was quickly discovered and torn down. We started something that everyone was starting to do.”
Both Bobby and Cayden enjoyed their time working on the jon_pasinski_fan_page. Cayden shared that, “overall the page was amazing up until the end,” and added that future pages should, “represent the teacher in a good light and try not to defame the teacher or make them look like they are not doing their job properly.” Bobby gave a similar warning in stating, “it was fun for everyone but be careful because some people can take it as being inappropriate or even harassment.”
We have all had the privilege to witness the rise and, at least for now, the fall of these interesting uses of time.
Image Credit: Element5 Digital on Unsplash
Comentarios