You

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• Youre updating your profile on facebook.com
• Is someone looking over your shoulder?

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A Perfect Friday Night
Its the perfect Friday night the party is
popping, half the school is in attendance, and
everyone seems to be getting more and more
festive as the night goes on and inhibitions
fade. Who cares what you do, you figure, since
nobodys going to remember this party tomorrow
anyway. But then the Facebook pictures go up.
With the click of a mouse, probably while you
were still sleeping off the night before, a
classmate who brought along a camera has made
available to the world photographs of you in some
very compromising positions. Seattle
University Spectator 2/1/06
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What you say could haunt you!
In the past few months, college, high school and
even middle school students across the USA have
been suspended or expelled, thrown off athletic
teams, passed over for jobs and even arrested
based on their online postings. USA Today
3/8/06
Students post pictures of themselves holding
cans of beer and bottles of liquor even when
they're underage. They pose suggestively wearing
little sometimes no clothing. Some appear to
be smoking marijuana in bongs or joints, even
holding firearms. They openly write nasty
comments about each other or their teachers and
coaches online. USA Today 3/8/06
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A FEW EXAMPLES Admissions dean Paul Marthers at
Reed College in Portland, Ore., says the school
denied admission this year to one applicant in
part because his entries on the blogging site
LiveJournal included disparaging comments about
Reed. Two Louisiana State swimmers were kicked
off the team last spring for criticizing their
coaches on Facebook. A University of Colorado
offensive tackle was suspended from a bowl game
in December for sending a racially threatening
message through Facebook to a Colorado
cross-country runner. An employer who was
ready to hire a student from Vermont Technical
College in Randolph Center changed his mind after
seeing the student's Facebook page, says Lauri
Sybel, director of the college career center.
Since then, Sybel says she has checked other
students' pages to make sure they weren't hurting
their job prospects. - USA Today 3/8/06
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Common Sense Applies
"People are learning how to use the site and
what's OK to share," says Facebook founder Mark
Zuckerberg. "As time goes on, people will learn
what's appropriate, what's safe for them and
learn to share accordingly." USA Today 3/8/06
It may seem like "stealing" to most college
students, but drunken photos and racy comments
posted on the Facebook are considered public
property. So don't be surprised if authorities
are snooping around. Tampa Bay Times 3/3/06
"If you wouldn't put it on a billboard, you
shouldn't put it on the Facebook said Parry
Aftab, an Internet security expert who runs
WiredSafety.org. "I always tell students not to
post anything their parents, the police, a
college president, a future employer or a
predator shouldn't see." Tampa Bay Times 3/3/06
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Many colleges and universities make a distinction
between looking for violations and using
information available to further an on-going
investigation.
However, William Ferguson, associate director of
Public Safety at Ithaca College and member of
Facebook, said the department has no inhibitions
about using information on the site to collect
evidence, identify subjects or to pursue
immediate safety concerns. Police at
Pennsylvania State University used student
pictures from the Web site to punish nearly 50
students after they rushed the football field to
celebrate a victory over Ohio State University,
according to a Jan. 20 article in the Chronicle
of Higher Education. Campus police at George
Washington University in Washington, D.C., used
the site to locate weekend parties, according to
a Jan. 8 article in The New York Times. - The
Ithacan 2/9/06
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Submitted by Gabrielle E Testerman, University
of Connecticut