Doyle Byrnes never imagined her future as a registered nurse would be in jeopardy because of a photo.

The Johnson County Community College student was dismissed from the college on Nov. 11 for posting a picture of herself and a human placenta on the social networking website Facebook.

On Jan. 6, a U.S. federal judge overturned the dismissal of Byrnes and three other students who had been dismissed for the same offense.

‘We are disappointed with the court’s decision today,’ said Terry Calaway, the community college’s president, in a statement made on Jan. 2. ‘Of course we’ll abide by the judge’s decision and readmit the student to the nursing program.’

Multiple calls to Calaway by The Daily Orange were not returned.

Byrnes and a group of other nursing students attended an off-site lab course at Olathe Medical Center on Nov. 10 with Amber Delphia, a nursing instructor at the community college, to examine a human placenta, according to the lawsuit. While at the medical center, Byrnes and four other students posed for pictures with the human placenta with the intent of posting the pictures on Facebook, according to the lawsuit.

‘She (Byrnes) advised me that the photos were taken with expressed consent of her adviser,’ said Clifford Cohen, Byrnes’s lawyer.

The students told Delphia that the photos would be posted on Facebook, according to the students’ statement in the lawsuit. After being told that, Delphia responded, ‘Oh, you girls,’ and she did not warn them that they may be disciplined, according to the lawsuit. Delphia told the students to remove anything that might identify the organ or the location, according to the lawsuit.

Multiple calls to Delphia by The Daily Orange were not returned.

U.S. District Judge Eric F. Melgren ruled that the important issue was that the students believed they had expressed consent by Delphia to post the pictures on Facebook, according to the lawsuit.

The photos had only remained on Facebook for three hours before Delphia called Byrnes and told her to take them down. The next day, the students were dismissed from the nursing program and the college for unprofessional behavior, according to the lawsuit.

‘We will not tolerate such insensitivity on the part of our nursing students,’ said Julie Haas, associate vice president of marketing communications at the community college, in a statement made on Jan. 6. ‘Please know their actions do not reflect the standards of our nursing program, which is renowned for the quality of its instruction and its graduates.’

After being dismissed, Byrnes was the only student of the group to bring the college to court.

Byrnes’ lawyer, Cohen, said Byrne had been dismissed from the college without any reasonable hearing. The college’s website specifically lays out the steps to having a disciplinary appeal process, from which Byrnes was denied, Cohen said.

‘Students have due process rights before a university can deny them their education,’ Cohen said.

Byrnes said in the lawsuit that she wanted to finish her education at the college, as she was scheduled to graduate this spring. 

According to court documents, the community college’s director of nursing, Jeanne Walsh, had said she would support Byrnes if she sought readmission to the program next fall and did not return for the spring semester.

But Byrnes felt she needed to be reinstated for the spring semester because she is engaged to be married in August and plans to move to Virginia with her husband, where she wants to work as a registered nurse, according to the lawsuit.

Melgren issued an injunction and ordered the college to allow Byrnes to make up any fall semester exams she missed and to enroll in the spring semester, which begins Wednesday.

Byrnes was not the only student to benefit from the ruling.

‘Johnson County Community College has readmitted the three other students,’ Cohen said. ‘I feel very good about that.’

snbouvia@syr.edu

Published on January 17, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Stephanie: snbouvia@syr.edu | @snbouvia