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Kent State Banning Athletes from Using Facebook
denebian devil links to a Columbus Dispatch story about athletes at Kent State being forbidden to use Facebook — "not by the Web site, but by university administrators."
From the article: "Athletics Director Laing Kennedy recently told student-athletes they have until Aug. 1 to remove their Facebook profiles, citing a need to protect both their identities and the university's image. "We're really concerned about the safety of our student-athletes and some of the personal information some of them have on there," he said. ... If student-athletes don't remove their profiles by the deadline, they risk losing their scholarships, he said. Coaches and athletics counselors will monitor the site for violators."
denebian devil continues "Arstechnica also has an interesting take on the subject. Makes you wonder why they even bother providing internet connections on college campuses."
Apparently, they just didn't learn their lesson!! Now they are just trying to be controlling digitally.
... under "Prior Restraint." (Which, I'm told, the Supreme Court has roundly rejected.)
A state university with this kind of policy is setting themselves up for the mother of all First Amendment lawsuits. What an amazingly-dumb waste of university funding.
is this even legal? I would think that what an adult choses to do in their provate time is their business... besides that, how are they any more or less safe on face book than on any internet site/chatroom in which they provide a large amount of information about themselves...
I suspect that this has far more to do with the uni wanting to protect its image - which for some reason it believes would be more damaged by people being on face-book than than this action to put stupid restrictions over what people can do
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
At my own college, security uses facebook to find out about parties and underage drinking on campus. Chances are, someone put stupid info up and has ruined i for everyone. Do I feel bad for them? Not at all.
Protect the university's image
"Our students don't drink! Honest"
I can attest to the fact that lots of students post drinking photos, even joining groups like "I was drunk when my facebook profile photo was taken". Kent state is worried about this. While I'm guessing they're wringing their hands at such open bragging about underage drinking that sort of thing is a fact of life, from long before facebook existed.
The Cheese Stands Alone.
Why Facebook and not Myspace? I've never even heard of "Facebook"...
I'm not fat, just big boned...
The Duke lacrosse team will do for college sports what Janet Jackson did for network TV. Nobody should be surprised that college sports don't want any more such negative publicity, and anyone who has used Facebook knows that its users are almost as dumb as Myspace users when it comes to posting incriminating pictures and other details of their lives. (Almost. Not quite. At least these are college students instead of pedophiles, adolescents, and aspiring criminals).
I think this violates the first amendment "Congress
shall make no law
peaceably to assemble". This is an implicit freedom of association issue, and as a
state funded school, Kent State has an obligation to uphold the constitution.
They do as an institution with an internet connection, have the right to
blacklist certain websites at their ISP level, which would probably be the best
technological solution, which would block students from using the account on
campus. But they are going after 'athletes' in particular, which is a viscious form of
discriminiation.
They feel that they need to 'protect their image', and student athletes form
a higher percentage of that 'image' than should really be the case. As much as I like
sports, we have elevated their role in college policy to an absurd level. Money talks.
But if a student has an athletic scholarship, he should be considered a student, first and
foremost, and no additional restrictions on being a student should be allowed. Sure, kick
them off the team if you want to, but by tying their student status to this rule, you are
holding them hostage, and to a different standard than your regular student. This is unfair
to them, especially as they are generating more revenue for you than the average student.
Sure maybe the student may be giving stalkers information, or embarrasing the
school. But that could be true of any student. So should the university ban all
cameras on campus, as not to show any drunken students? Ban all contact with the
outside world? These are students, not prisoners, and if they want to hand over their
information for stalkers, that is their right. They are being stupid, but that is their right.
If the university doesn't want them stalked on campus, it should beef up campus security.
They are not the university's 'asset', they are it's student, and it is supposed to be providing
them a service, not the other way around. Don't treat them as a revenue stream, and don't
violate the spirit of the constitution.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Is this even enforceable? Last time I remember checking, facebook didn't provide any way to check that a person's registered profile is actually them, outside of saying the email is from the actual school. Last year my friend registered himself as Kwami Brown and started poking all the guys on the hall.
What's to stop someone from taking a Kent State player's identity and creating a fake profile of them?
But she stressed the importance of excluding information employers wouldn't want to see.
One student chose a picture of himself shirtless holding a Miller Lite can for his profile photo. He's on the baseball team.
Another belongs to the "My cell phone is my best friend when I'm drunk in Kent" group and lists skinny-dipping as an interest.
I always thought these were good things on a pro-athlete's resume?
...away from the internet as a network for data exchange, and towards the internet as a one-way pipe by which to push content your way.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Is your free speech for sale ? It is if you want to keep that scholarship. This is a great example of how growing economic inequality spills over into other aspects of life. A well off student can afford to take a stand on principle here.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Yes, that's definitely my thought process. If I go look for the Kent State football players on Facebook and don't find any, the obvious conclusion is that the National Guard must have killed them.
It is fairly obvious that the school is less concerned with preventing students from engaging in illegal activity and undesirable behavior than it is with preventing it from becoming public knowledge that students are engaging in illegal activity and undesirable behavior. If they had come out and said, "If we catch you confessing to activities that violate our code of conduct, you will face disciplinary action", that would be quite another thing altogether. (Not that people wouldn't complain, I'm just saying I think they could make a pretty decent defense of their actions.)
Click me for free money!
Tin soldiers and Bush is coming,
We're finally on our own website.
This summer I hear the clicking, Four spreads in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it
Firewalls are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her spread nude on the page
How can you link when you know?
Gotta get down to it
Firewalls are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her spread nude on the page
How can you link when you know?
Tin soldiers and Bush is coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the clicking, Four spreads in Ohio.
The move to ban the site came from students and coaches expressing concern over safety and privacy issues. Kennedy said he hasn't seen the site.
So not only has the guy making the policy not even seen the site, but the move supposedly came from students and others - the same students who were posting there in the first place? "Higher" education is so smart.
Um, perhaps because it is easeir to plagerize papers using the internet? But seriously, one could consider research for papers, help with math and science papers. Most universities, perhaps you haven't been in one recently, pay for a large number of resources, that are really quite expensive, to thier students and faculty.
Of course, it may be that millions of dollars of infrastructure and millions in connections fees are what is neccesary for the modern college student to get a date. I just had to ask the babe that sat next to me in Calculus.
To be more serious, I understand that this ban has more to do with public image, and could be construed as censorship. But think of ti this way. The average athelete is on scholarship, which mean he or she is there at the whim of the university and those alumni that donate to the university. If, due to something posted on the net, such funds become unavailable or the students freedom becomes compromised, then the student does not get an education. We all know that adolescents and young adult do silly things, and none of us really want to impose any significant consequences for the most of the silly things kids do. The minor things are often best handled in house in such a way that boundries are enforced, but the future of the student is not compromised. It may seem funny to post teammates drinking, or in drag, or pretending to commit some felony, but in the competitive world of althletics, where perhaps 1:500 gets into college ball, and 1:2000 gets into pro ball, such actions may not be insignificant.
And think of it another way. When one enters college, escpecially on an scholarship, and especially on an athelitic scholar ship, one is asking the college to help guide you to a hopefully more promising future. A significant number of freedoms and rights are given away. Unlike other 18 year olds, you are in class and studying, instead of working at starbucks for 8 hours then coming to you apartements and doing nothing. The college students has any number of people using thier experience to navigate a specific educational journey, even though it is theorectically possible to navigate that same path using free resources. In other words, the student is attending the university to help insure a specific outcome, and has accepted some limitations to achieve that outcome.
To put it simpler, if facebook is so important, an athelete could gain an education and even break into the majors without a university. It is not impossible to his the minors and work the ladder to the majors. But if one wants a univeristy degree, or wants the NCAA help, then one should have a little trust in the people in charge. If there is no trust, then why go to that school? If the school is so corrupt, then why accept the tainted money?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
"Makes you wonder why they even bother providing internet connections on college campuses."
;)
Oh you know, research, email, that sort of thing. This may surprise you but the original intent of providing internet access was not to pass around mp3's, pictures of yourself drunk, and porn (well, that last one is debatable).
You would think students over the years would have gotten better about using the internet but it seems it has regressed quite a bit. I am reminded of reports of students at the university where I work getting busted selling drugs on facebook and posting pictures of themselves doing illegal things. In the papers they always seem quoted as indignantly saying "I didn't know the police could monitor that stuff, that is really scary" as though cops looking at facebook was on par with warrant-less wiretapping.
Look, I'm a Fight The Power, Go EFF, Die MPAA kinda guy. However, the way I see it is if a school is giving you tens of thousands of dollars for your education and they decide they want you to either (1) not advertise that you are a drunken asshole all over the net, or (2) risk losing that free money, then that is their right. I think it is a little harsh to ban facebook altogether, I think I might have seen one or two actual mature entries in it, but that is certainly on more solid legal ground than subjectively taking it on a case by case basis.
Also, you can look at it as preparing these student athletes for the future. If they make it to the pros and become the typical corporate whore, they will have to get used to being told how to act, what to say, and what to do. College is actually preparing them for the real world
Finkployd
Isn't Kent State the college where they executed Vietnam War protesters in the 1970s?
I guess the only lesson the college learned from that hideous exercise was that published pictures of their students can get the college into trouble.
--
make install -not war
it's also impossible as you have to be a registered student at the same university to view any information on a facebook member.
Or you'd have to have a pliable intern who's a registered student at the university in question. Or have $50 and/or some alcohol to bribe a freshman to log on using his account information.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
Why Facebook and not Myspace?
Because the main "advantage" of facebook is also its main disadvantage. Since the profile is automatically associated with your college email address, the facebook profile becomes an extension of your "college identity" and what you present on there is more or less irrevocably associated with the college you go to (there are now ways around this, but circumventing this basically makes having a facebook profile meaningless.)
Will KSU care what their student athletes put on Myspace? Maybe...but since its alot easier for the student to not associate their college with their Myspace profile, a careful student may have no problems with Myspace at all.
You mean we have a constitutional right to a college scholarship?
I wish I knew that earlier.
I'm a Kent student. And while I know this is by far not universal among the athletes at this campus, at least going by the ones who I've seen in classes:
Good, if not good enough. Because they're getting a ridiculous amount of money in the form of scholarships and such, in exchange for which they do terribly in classes (dragging their groups down with them, much of the time), drink as much or more as anybody else here (which is no small amount) and then go throw a ball around every now and then in exchange.
No, I don't have sympathy. Stop showing off your drinking skills and go to class. I'd be happier if they'd prevent them from drinking and tell them to stop using the team as an excuse to ditch classwork when they apparently have plenty of time for parties. Considering very few of them are going to be able to rely on sports as a career, I'd be happier if the University was less concerned with image and more concerned with the fact that the images are often of underaged students drinking alcohol. But... oh, right. I go to a state school in Ohio. Chances of that happening... slightly less than zero. They'll probably end up cutting the whole ban later due to lack of funds for enforcement.
A starter on our basketball team (a computer engineering major no less!) got pranked pretty hard by an opposing school after an elaborate IM ruse that all started from someone acquiring his AIM screen name off his facebook account. OTOH I think people should really just use a bit more common sense about this stuff and realize that there are potential repercussions for putting this stuff outthere. I just can't shake the feeling that facebook is slowly going to go away. Especially as more and more administrative types begin using it under the guise of students.
I'm sure this is a DIRECT outcome of the Alleged Duke Rape Case that's not only being mishandled by the prosecution(There IS no case against the Duke kids IMHO), but it's forcing Universities to take steps to protect their students(read: athletes) from whatever digital evil they thought up.
The "anti-facebook" is more than likely a protective measure to keep the wild parties where strippers might be involved under wraps. We all know, if there's no proof, then it NEVER happened.
" i r 1337. j00 a l0z3r "
That talk kinda makes you cry, doesn't it?
That's right..cry those nerdly tears
Kent State has a proud history of violating their students rights.
at least the National Guard is tied up on the border. I'd hate to see anyone shot for exposing this fine university to the internet.
Taking the position that these tradeoffs shouldn't exist is all well and good, but expecting people to take you seriously is something else.
Those tradoffs should not exist at a state university. If they want to kick people out doing some real harm, that's OK. Kicking people out for publishing a web page is pure bullshit. Policing it is going to be a real waste of time and money.
If you want me to take YOU seriously, justify the expense in some real terms. No, telling me that the company you work for sucks is not an adequate justification. Nor are the silly things rich people can do or the fact you work for a living (or at least pretend to work for a living).
Face it, at best Kent State's Administrators are a bunch of pussies. At worst, they are a bunch of greed heads worried about revenue from "exclusive" interviews.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Holy crap...
Dude. Seriously, a period. It's "where you take a breath."
I completely understand the policy... As an employee of an Athletic University for a School larger than Kent State, I see first hand how irresponsible these kids (student athletes) can be (Not saying the all are, but we all read our local papers). There is a lot of pressure on these kids and what an immature 18 year old would think nothing of may haunt them for their professional career. College athletes are celebrities in their own right and people are hungry for dirt. Say a hot shot freshman gets drafted by a major sports team and he posted photos of himself at parties drinking as a minor. Now we have dirt. What's worse, if he is a scholarship holder and he's publicly posting his lack of respect for the law and the school he plays for, it doesn't look good on the school, athletes, or staff.
A lot of responsibility is on these kids. Believe me. So, think of it as a rule that insists that student athletes CYA, for their sake and the school's sake.
One day the toilets of the world will rise up... And I'm going to nuke them.