It might have been just a laugh when a US man ran naked through a parking lot, but his employer wasn’t smiling.
When Mark Bringhurst was dared to streak through an apartment complex the risk to his job probably wasn’t high on his list of concerns. Unfortunately for the 2011 Teacher of the Year, the school wasn’t so open minded.
According to the Huffington Post, Bringhurst was arrested for running naked through the parking lot of a Camden County apartment complex in March and was fired for what the Vineland School District considered to be conduct "unbecoming of a tenured teacher". It was reportedly the second time he had run naked through the area.
Witnesses called police out of concern for the safety of the children in the area and when officers found Bringhurst at a local adult bookstore he first denied being at the complex. Eventually he admitted to running naked through the parking lot, reportedly because someone he met online dared him.
Bringhurst eventually pleaded guilty to acting in an improper manner. After the charges against Bringhurst were filed, his employer, the Vineland School District, notified him that tenure charges would be brought before the local board of education.
The arbitrator handling Bringhurst's case, said the he had "exercised severely poor judgment on more than one occasion. His lack of judgment is not diminished by the fact that his conduct occurred outside the school setting."
