Problem is, everyone at my former high school thinks I am.
I had a teacher who was a lot of things, stupid being high on the list. One day he was going on a rant about how dangerous Communism is, and I calmly raised my hand and said that I was offended, as I was a member of the Young Communist League.
And then I cranked it up- I started toting around the manifesto, bringing communism up in classroom discussions, and generally acting like a zippy Marxist.
The thing is that virtually nobody realized I was kidding. To this day many people at my high school think I’m a Communist.
I’m wondering if this would exclude me from any federal jobs. I know that the school has in the past gotten calls asking if <insert name> ever expressed communist tendancies, sympathies, or what have you. (A teacher told me that she had received one of these calls, although she never told me when, so I don’t know if they still go on.)
So what, if anything, would me stating that I was a communist exclude me from?
Also, would they take “I was just kidding” as an excuse?
I wouldn’t think being a Communist would exlude you from anything (except common sense, but that’s MY opinion, YMMV).
If you applied for a job, and they rejected you on the basis of your political view and you can prove it, you would probably have grounds for a very lucrative lawsuit…
I think this might be a problem only if you were applying for some sort of high security job where they might trot out the McCarran Act or something like that.
However, I’ve worked in municipal government and I haven’t been asked. When I worked for UCLA, I was asked if I had ever taken an oath against the U.S. or the state of California.
The municipal governments out in SoCal have stopped asking for oaths.
Its hard to beleive but i did the same thing in high school. I thought peoples reactions to it were really kind of funny. A lot of less then brilliant people thought I was a nazi ( Due to the fact they probibly thought they were the same thing). It was funny because everybody else thought I was a Jew, which i’m not. It was
Just to add a few cents, here is a recent situation I read about in the paper… The student body president of a local community college was a member of the Communist party, and the Constitution (or whatever they call it) of the school said something about how no member of student government could get a paycheck from the school if they were a Communist. This person was allowed to be the student body president, but they could not get a paycheck (which wasn’t much money that I recall, but it was enough to make it a severe annoyance.) Sometime about 6 months ago they raised a fuss about it in the media and they removed that statute from the Constitution of the school, but it had been there and he had not received his pay for a while.
Only situation I’ve ever heard of of Communists having less opportunity than non-Communists…could be more that I’ve never heard of…
Depends on what level of clearance you’re going for. If you try for a secret level security clearance or above, andygirl, I’m afraid you’re toast. Sorry, but I am not joking. What you described is potentially able to sink a security clearance. For real. I work in the DoD, and they’ve denied it to people for less than rumors of Communist flirtation. The only thing that might let you squeak by is that it was a high school indiscretion.
(portion of post deleted at poster’s request - Jill)
Hasn’t hurt me any; then again I’m a contractor and not an actual federal employee. I did have to fill out a questionnaire for a “position of public trust” but haven’t gotten any feedback from it yet knocks wood except that it got me back in touch with an old buddy I used as a reference.
Finally, I keep it quiet when I’m at work. Sure I get into discussions on issues and stuff and talk from a leftist position but I don’t get all jargony and self-righteous when I disagree with someone. I save that for the boards
Olentzero, I’m a contractor too and had to get a Secret clearance just to be let in the door here. It isn’t just the DoD; once I was going to apply for a contractor’s position at Justice and they required a clearance too. My mom told me they’d been asking around, and someone I used to work with at another job got back to me too. Gives a creepy feeling to think about Big Brother prying into your private life . . . brrr.
Back in Catholic high school, I once claimed to be a pseudo-Muslim, just to get out of having to attend Assembly. Tried to think of some other religion and that was the first one that came to mind. I doubt they’ll pry all the way back to my high school, though. But you can never be sure . . . the process is shrouded in mystery . . . .
