Freedom to TYPE?

Well, I wanted to continue with my theme of Facebook and social networking for my next blog. I would agree that censoring what you post on these social networks is a good idea, because you never know who you are exposing your information to. I know there are some privacy options in which you can block people. But seriously….there are so many options to chose from such as a limited profile, block list, network availability, ignoring, etc. If you notice though, the default settings is that everyone can see you information and will stay like this until you decide to change it. So is there a line being created between who sees your information on these social networking sites? And if so, who is going to make this line on what is being said on these sites.

Read this article on thefire.org dealing with freedom of speech on college campuses:

http://www.thefire.org/article/10552.html

This is an article that documents a situation that happened at the University of Chicago dealing with a student posting pictures on a social networking site such as Facebook. A male student that was attending the University of Chicago at the time posted some negative pictures of his ex-girlfriend that was pretty harsh. (Just a side note)Being a female student, I would be DEVISTATED of what he posted on his Facebook page. The ex-girlfriend contacted the Dean of Students and asked that he was commanded that he had to remove the post and pictures from Facebook. The dean of students decided that it was her job to tell this male student that he needed to take off these pictures and comments because in the student handbook it states that you should treat other students with dignity and respect. The male student immediately took down the pictures.

The question that is being asked here is….Do colleges have a say on what is posted on a public off campus internet site? I think it is a violation of the student’s freedom of speech. If this was a campus internet site I could see that there could be a problem, but this was on Facebook which is not controlled by any campus. I think the male student had ever right to post what he did. They were true allegations about this girl and he had proof.

I bet you are thinking that I am crazy for supporting this male student, because I am a female. But I am trying to keep in mind the whole situation. If colleges started monitoring and censoring EVERYTHING that was on Facebook, there would be no more Facebook. There are pictures of parties, drugs, and other things that could get students in trouble all the time. This would be a headache for college administrators…spending countless hours on Facebook looking for situations to censor. Also don’t forget that I do think that it is smart to censor some of the picture that you post on Facebook, because like I said last week everyone is on Facebook. Your potential boss could be on Facebook checking out your photos after turning in your resume.

I am familiar with another website that recently was shut down. It was called Juicycampus.com. This website was the worst of worst social allegation websites. Basically anyone could post anything about anyone on campus whether it was true or not. At my undergraduate campus (6,000 students), this website was the only thing that was discussed for about a month. There was a discussion board that was about some of the athletes on another sport team that was saying some horrible things about the girls. I personally knew these girls and knew that most of what was being said was not true. This website is now shut down. I think that website was crossing the line and it was good that is was shut down. So I think there is a limit on freedom of speech on the internet.

This is the new era with technology and social networking and I think this situation is just one out of a million to come. I know there has to be more out there now similar to the University of Chicago student. I think either way, college administrators need to deal with these situations and become aware that in the future more Facebook postings will affect students on their campuses. Whether to censor what students post or not will be up to the school, but I think this needs to be addressed at all schools soon.