People all over the place are using social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook to contact and keep up with each other. What five years ago was hardly ever heard of, now has exploded into one of the most popular things to do. If you don’t have a site in MySpace or Facebook, then you are completely out of it. Now, the College campuses have decided to tap into this phenomenon. According to an article in the USA Today, colleges such as Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA, and Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey have set up social networking sites. According to Steve Jones, communications professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago the reason that colleges are using social networking sites is obvious.
This has become such a familiar mode of communication for teenagers; it’s basically meeting them on their own turf. It makes it more comfortable to get information they might not otherwise get. In a year or two virtually every college will have something like this.
Administrators say that the purpose of using such sites is to
market their schools to potential students and to put freshman at ease.
While I have never used a social networking site, I think that this is a great idea and very useful way for College’s to help incoming students and also to keep people active in the campus community. One problem though that could arise from using the social networking sites is what to do with those postings that criticize the College or University? Should the postings be censored, or is the network free domain to the students? Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee school of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University in Ames says that,
If we exercise prior review or censorship, we’re going to invite a whole new series of litigations.
If the Colleges or University’s do censor the networking sites, is that infringement on free speech? If the College is going to offer a networking site, shouldn’t the students be able to say what they want? Cheryl Brown, director of undergraduate admissions for Binghamton University says that,
If you want the authenticity and true voice of the students, you have to be willing to take the bad with the good. On occasion, something sneaks in where we go, ‘gulp.’ And so far we have been pretty open about letting our students’ comments stand as is.
I would agree with Cheryl. Colleges and University’s should want to preserve the authenticity and true voice of their students and by not censoring the students posts that is one way in which they can achieve that. While the college should allow the student to voice his opinion, the student also needs to be cogniscant of the fact that what they post is a reflection on the college and should be mindful of what they post. Just because the college gives them relativley free reigns to post what they want, doesn’t meen that they should go ahead and do that. The student needs to be aware of what they should or should not post. Unfortunalty it is the select few who abuse the privelage that forces the college’s to censure what they do.
Campuses Connect Students Online
August 15, 2006 at 9:40 PM ET
by Janet Kornblum, USA TODAY
