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10 Percent of Colleges Check Applicants' Social Profiles
theodp writes "Confirming paranoid high-schoolers' fears, a new Kaplan survey reveals that 10% of admissions officers from prestigious schools said they had peeked at sites like Facebook and MySpace to evaluate college-bound seniors. Of those using the profiles, 38% said it had a 'negative impact' on the applicant. 'Today's application is not just what you send ... but whatever they can Google about you,' said Kaplan's Jeff Olson. At Notre Dame, assistant provost for enrollment Dan Saracino said he and his staff sometimes come across candidates portraying themselves in a less-than-flattering light. 'It's typically inappropriate photos — like holding up a can of beer at a party,' Saracino said. On the other hand, using the Internet to vet someone's character seems overly intrusive to Northwestern's Christopher Watson. 'We consider Facebook and MySpace their personal space,' the dean of undergraduate admissions said. 'It would feel somewhat like an invasion of privacy.'"
We recently discussed similar practices from prospective employers.
If you can't figure that out, you shouldn't be getting into good schools.
Don't put up what you don't want other people to see - I hear all about the new generation growing up with the Internet and Facebook being a part of their life.
But what about simple commonsense rules (either derived on their own or imbibed from parents)?
Would you make a fool of yourself in the street (OK, some people would)?
In other news... The earth is still round.
This is a completely legitimate practice. After all, if we don't catch people holding up cans of beer at a party before they are admitted, why, they'll be doing it at colleges around the country next before you know it!
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
HOLY S***!!!! Someone is holding up a beer can in a picture and smiling. No self respecting person would ever do that!
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
'It's typically inappropriate photos â" like holding up a can of beer at a party,' Saracino said
Riiiight. Because nobody who has had a picture taken holding a can of beer could possibly benefit from a higher education, or be a net positive for society.
Cripes. Makes me glad I'm decades past my college days.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
for accuracy. First its really easy to blackmail someone by creating an account with their bio, and probably next to impossible to get it down. Secondly, esp. with more common names, its really easy to find someone with the same name who is totally unrelated to the applicant. Should you be judged based on what that person does? Finally, how many people actually take the time to really interpret what a quick google search reveals? A search for my real name without quotes, esp. my full name, reveals tons of porn. I guess I just better hope that nobody tries to search for me on the internet without taking the time to do a proper query(and even then all they will find is my embarrassing performance in the one and only sanctioned chess tournament I ever participated in....)
Monstar L
... "Because," Saracino continues, "Beer is not the sort of thing people drink at college."
UTF-8: There and Back Again
...but every time I read one of these articles I can't help but wonder, "Who the heck uses their real name on the internet!?" The answer is probably something like, "People who aren't paranoid."
Honestly. It's no news that high school kids drink, do drugs, and fuck each others brains out. So what? You expect them to not do that when they need to wind down?
I think a reality check is in order. I can understand checking for a long history of a criminal background and seeing that they've done nothing to curb it, sure. They're probably a liability; but some kid who parties with his friends? No more or less a liability than the next person, given the odds.
Their reliance on the fact that the profiles are "real"
Of those using the profiles, 38% said it had a 'negative impact' on the applicant. 'Today's application is not just what you send ... but whatever they can Google about you,'
Suppose a person has a grudge against you. They know you are applying for admission to a certain school. They know the school searches for myspace profiles or other profiles on social networking sites.
The person anonymizes themselves using proxies and creates a fake facebook or myspace profile. They use your name and general location: they include some nasty message/text that would be seen as highly negative.
The admissions office searches for your name. They find this page. They have no real way to verify whether or not you posted the page.
Their decision otherwise would be to admit you to their school, but they assume you posted this horrible page: it has your name, location, and a few other details that match their records, after all. Their assumption leads to a negative conclusion which prevents you from being admitted.
The person who posted the info is completely anonymous, and there is no means to locate the person.
What is your recourse? You will never actually be told the underlying reason for the rejection.
This is a reason universities should not be "searching" social network sites: until such time as the identity of the site's creator can be proven. They are creating a DoS opportunity for anonymous people to prevent other people from being admitted.
'We consider Facebook and MySpace their personal space,' the dean of undergraduate admissions said. 'It would feel somewhat like an invasion of privacy.'"
They're being overly sensitive. MySpace isn't private. Information put on the internet, publicly available without a password or other security, should be considered as public as anything on a community bulletin board.
That's why deeplinking is legal, to refer to the discussion from a few days ago.
Also, a simple MySpace check can probably tell the college a vast amount of detail about the student... and their level of stupidity. Responsibility and Judgment should be rewarded.
That's news to me. Even though I am not in any of the social networking sites (can you believe it?), I was always under the impression that the profiles you create there are, you know, publicly accessible.
If you don't want information about you to be viewed, it could be a good idea not to publish it online.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
..including the internet.
Arguably the universities should restrict themselves to the application documents and interviews, in the spirit of fair play.
However, these kids have created publicly viewable profiles for themselves and chosen to leave the privacy settings off so anyone with a net connection can view them. They've then loaded up these profiles with photos and information that make them look bad, and still decided to leave it all open to public view.
There's no way someone who's done all this could possibly complain that someone has invaded their privacy. They've undoubtedly tried to find all the online information about their prospective colleges and professors; it's a two-way street.
Any college using this sort of highly dubious character assessment technique would not be a place I would want to study or work.
Its stupid anyway, hell, If I'd been judged by the things I got up to outside the classroom I'd never have made it past my first year at uni.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
It doesn't have to be a photo you posted... but someone else could have posted it and tagged you! You essentially have to start assuming that any digital photo taken of you will end up online with your name. Quite scary. Would be nice if there sere some sort of consent-based tagging, requiring your approval, but that's probably too complicated for Facebook to think about.
--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation.
Are you college bound?
Afraid of bad photos appearing?
Well be afraid no more!
Here's an example of what we can do for you!
This is Jeff "Stoner" and Mark "The Beerman". We remade their image on the net. With our patented process, we will replace all images of you with: beers, drugs, orgies, etc... with wholesome American images.
Act now!
(C) Partier Be Gone.
It negatively affected 38% of applicants? Which means 62% benefited from having a Facebook/myspace profile? This seems to be an argument for social networking, not against it.
The obvious next step is to make your profile a promotional tool. The "high achiever profile" may be the next big thing. You addressing the Junior Chamber of Commerce. You working on a political campaign. You being interviewed on TV.
Soon, this will be a routine part of getting into college, and there will be services to do this for you.
If these people think holding up a can of beer at a party is a mark of unintelligence, they can keep their worthless degree. Of what value could their opinion on academic worthiness possibly be if they make such a superficial judgment?
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
The danger here is that these social networking sights have no inherent credibility at all. How does anyone know a facebook page is the student they searched for? It could be a fake page put up by some douche-bag, it could be someone else entirely, or it could be simply an inside joke that the school miss-interpreted.
I don't buy the argument that going into Facebook or Myspace is some kind of "invasion of privacy". That idea is artificial and created by an insular view of these spaces because parents aren't generally involved in them (but obviously could be). But believing what's said on any of these sites without a huge grain of salt is just wrong. Even if 90% of it is accurate, do we really want to give that much power to any douche-bag that puts up a fake site about someone?
If you want a more concrete reason why schools shouldn't use Google searches and Facebook/Myspace for admission decisions, just think about liability. Does a school really want a big court case about someone suing them over not being admitted because of a Myspace/Facebook page? It doesn't even matter if the school is "right", it's more about the exposure and bad press they'd get.
AccountKiller
Since when has a school been *just* about academics? Isn't it also about the 'life experience' aspect too?
Since when has a 'job' *just* been about 'performance'? Doesn't your personality and ability to fit in with others have anything to do with how well you'll do on a job?
creation science book
..to try to educate people like this.
FRA: STFU GTFO
There was a recent post on the physics group blog Cosmic Variance about potential job applicants having webpages and getting Googled during the course of hiring for academic positions- postdocs and faculty. So it's not just the students, it's faculty as well.
There are lots of questions you can't have on a job application (sexual orientation, religion, etc.) but if an applicant volunteers that information, that is permitted. And the attitude seems to be that if information is on a webpage, it is "volunteered" to the world.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
If you can't figure that out, you shouldn't be on the admissions comittee to any school.
The internet being public doesn't make all information on it relevant.
Also, judge much? "you shouldn't be getting into good schools?" What the hell? Is the best admission criterion really having an understanding of internet privacy? I would say not even close. You can be really smart about important things and not realize that. You can also be really smart and not realize someone snapped a picture of you and uploaded it in an unfortunate situation.
Holding a beer at a party is inappropriate? Better cancel several hundred beer commercials then.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Also, don't most people go to college to drink and fuck anyway? Why would that even be an issue?
I don't see why some think it's silly that a Uni calls it a private affair. There are lots of things you see in public that you don't seek out.
I've come across a woman breastfeeding behind a display in an airport. Certainly it was in a public space yet I looked away and left her be as I considered that a private moment. Yes, I had the right to look but didn't. I think it's good a university says that certain areas aren't their business and irrelevant to their admission process. That said, I don't belong to any social networking site for a reason.
I worked for a company that had a ton of custom robots crawl Google, Usenet, The Internet Archive and a laundry list of other places your name or moniker might of left a mark. People often use an email address that goes "clevernicknameonlyIwilleveruse789@blah.com" what these things spider for is that clevernickname... part. It was mostly to embarrass people with their sophomoric attempts at debate in newsgroups or to dig up personal websites from their teen years but HR used it too. It discovered one of the applicants for the job of CFO had used his clevernickname... to bitch and rant about his last job on some obscure financial site, needless to say he did not get the job but they printed out his tirade and posted on the BB.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Keep two sets of books.
Benjamin Q. Smith is a totally straight-up-and-square civic minded volunteer who rescues kittens and tutors disadvantaged kids.
BenjieQ is normal and holds up cans of beer at parties.
What could possibly go wrong ....
If you post stuff about yourself that reflects badly on you, you have no grounds for complaint. Live with the consequences of your actions or don't post. Underage drinking may or may not be a bad idea; telling the world about it definitely is. Why should a college want to admit a moron with no judgment?
I piss off bigots.
You don't show up for the job interview stoned and wearing a tie dye either. And, "We consider Facebook and MySpace their personal space,' the dean of undergraduate admissions said. 'It would feel somewhat like an invasion of privacy." is just so incredibly stupid. It is a PUBLIC site you morons. If you don't want to be known as a loadie, don't post it. Kids today, (as I sound just like my dad).
100 Percent of college applicants' check the college social profiles.
No story here, move on.
Surely you're joking, would they have turned away someone like Richard Feynman? for things like this:
Ok, so I can understand how people can search MySpace for pics, etc, since that is published to all. That's the point and utility of MySpace, so that you can promote yourself. If you are an artist or a band this is extremely useful.
However, I don't understand how people can search Facebook. I don't have a Facebook account as it seems useless unless you are part of an organization that uses it widely. The whole point of it is that it seems to be closed (and thus is useless for promoting your work).
Thus, my question is: how can people search your Facebook profile unless you are stupid enough to allow them to do so as your friend? Presumably, you have to be an especially stupid idiot to have your Facebook profile viewed by someone unintended? Or am I missing something?
then I'm going to create a Facebook account for myself and publish the photo. Just to lessen the chances of ending up in a job/college or whatever run by these pinched faced puritans. Life is too short man.
And by the way USA, the drinking age (which is unenforced anyway) is 18 pretty much every where else in the world. How many kids have died in Iraq/Afghanistan before they legally had the right to hold up a beer can at a party?
So .... for 38% of 10% of "prestigious" schools it's bad to have dirty laundry on your web page. Given that public schools are less picky, that implies that this would be a problem with at most 3% of schools.
And where does this leave your typical student on the way to "State U"? Doesn't seem like much to worry about.
-Frank
With Facebook, it's important to note that you don't actually have to be posting photos of yourself for them to end up online. It's become quite common in the younger generation for people to just take pictures and post them - often completely without the knowledge of the person who has their picture taken. If a person doesn't have facebook, often a profile is made for them just so people who post fanatically can tag them. It's not really the applicant's fault if an embarrassing photo ends up on the public internet this way. More and more, things that used to be private affairs are making it online and are available for the curious to look into.
In every other sector of adult life, public information about an individual is used as part of society's assessment that person. Yes, kids, adults are judged based on all their publicly available information. Sometimes, in addition, even uncomfortable private information is actively used against you like when applying for health insurance, life insurance, and large loans. True, sometimes that information is inaccurate. True, sometimes people launch smear campaigns to damage someone's reputation. Is it fair? No. But it is your adult responsibility to make sure your public and private social footprint is as accurate as possible. Why students expect special treatment when applying for college is beyond me. It isn't like the universities are hacking into their emails or facebook accounts. They are going to web sites that scream, "Hey everyone! Look at MEEEEE!!" All I can say is welcome to the real world, children.
It's much better if they go to a collage that understand that the important thing is what you do and can do, and not how you look like on some photos.
I personally don't trust people who don't have humiliating photos of themselves on the Internet, and I advice everyone else to do the same, because it means:
1) They are truly totally boring and will make you and your organisation depressed.
2) They have a huge lack of self-esteem.
3) They are criminals trying to hide.
4) They don't know what the Internet is.
If you create an account and impersonate somebody to tarnish their image, you'll be sued. And you'll lose.
It's a pretty cut and dry case of libel, so good luck with that.
. . . JeffK is attending the local community college and not Harvard.
What?
Their personal lives -- even when discussed in public -- should generally have no bearing on their ability to attend college and improve yourself.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Only an idiot would put easy to find, personally identifiable information onto a publicly accessible site on the internet.
If you are stupid enough to add data your myface page to such an extent that it can identify you to somebody that doesn't know you, you deserve to have your college application and/or job prospects ruined by it, especially if you act like a twat on said site.
If potentially damaging pictures show up, restrict the viewing of any pictures tagged of you to friends.
Even if this were the case (suppose you underestimate the malice of some kids), there is still the high risk that those admissions officers considering themselves well-versed enough online to employ such practices for instant, at-a-glance, no-questions-asked blanket condemnation will mistake you for someone else with a similar name, even more so if it is a rare (but unlike what they believe by no means unique) one making them think "this has got to be you".
Umm... yes? If you are stupid enough to have sex in public and get photographed doing it, then you absolutely deserve any and all negative consequences you get. Behave well, and you have nothing to fear... behave like an idiot, then you will get treated like one. It's called personal responsibility, and it is a good thing.
No, that's not what he means. If you are going to be a drunken fool, then the consequences are your responsibility. It's not the fault of the person taking the picture. Nor is it the responsibility of others to help lie for you and try to whitewash your life so that you can look good to college administrators; if you are in fact a drunken fool, then it is absolutely correct that you are portrayed that way in pictures. If you don't like those pictures, then don't be a drunken fool. Again, it's called taking personal responsibility for your life and not blaming your moral failings on the guy who photographed them.
No, the real trouble is that you don't like to be told that anything is wrong; you would prefer a world where anything goes and no one has to take responsibility for anything, including breaking the law. However, most of the rest of us who can read know that the legal age to drink is 21. All these applicants are breaking the law, and most people, including college admissions, rightly realize that breaking the law is wrong. And running around having unmarried sex with a bunch of people is irresponsible as well, condom or not. That's a great way to get an STD, cause a pregnancy, have your emotions ripped to shreds by some callous jerk who only wanted you for your body, etc. And while that by itself is irresponsible enough for 18 year olds to be doing, doing it in a situation where it can be PHOTOGRAPHED clearly marks someone as a fool, utterly lacking in any wisdom.
I don't blame colleges for not wanting their campuses filled with people who either think the law doesn't apply to them or who are out and out fools. When I was in college, my university (Iowa State) was filled with violence, rioting and destruction of property during its annual spring celebration, rioting caused by the fact that some fools were mad the bars were closing. More than 1000 drunken students rioted and fought police for hours, and I can't blame universities for wanting to screen out such morons.
Universities aspire to produce the great leaders of the next generation, and great leaders are those that have not just knowledge (read: SAT scores), but wisdom as well. And taking personal responsibility and leading a disciplined life are among the surest signs that someone has wisdom. Getting drunk all the time, breaking the law and running around having premarital sex are good signs that someone has none.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
It is going to be rough for a while, but I hope that we can watch a new norm get created as a generation who puts their frontstage and backstage personalities waaay too close together online grows up and becomes dominant.
Pop quiz: you are at a co-worker's desk looking at the monitor and working on something. An IM pops up. Do you avert your eyes? It is dreadfully hard, but we have to try. Folks conduct personal business at work. The internet makes that easy. We need to respect that and avert our eyes when they do it.
Myspace profiles are a microcosm of the internet: the good and the terrible are side by side in the same place. You have to learn the skill of knowing when not to look, because the only thing stopping you is you. Just because you CAN look at EVERYTHING doesn't mean you should. Just because it is information on the 'public' internet doesn't mean you should look at it. You should treat it as private just as soon as you realize it is something that the individual in question thinks is private.
Even if you don't follow these rules yourself, I bet you still implicitly follow them a little better than the college admissions boards who really have no clue and no experience with trying to keep public and private personas online. Things will change, if we give it time.
This is the equivalent of you searching for your boss, to make sure you want to take his money. "Oh, looks like Mr. Wilkins tokes up on the weekends. Don't want to work for him."
If the kid's got the grades to get in, what does it matter if he spends his off-hours studying or smoking up? And what business of it is U-WhereEver?
People need to stop tolerating this sort of thing - just because I go to your school (or work for your company) doesn't mean you control the rest of my life.
Uh, European here. *waves*
Premarital sex and drinking before you hit 21 are signs are signs you don't have wisdom, and anything illegal is automatically morally wrong?
Guess that produces the "great leaders" you guys have. Such as Bush and Cheney.
I'm not familiar with the inner workings of sites like Facebook and other forms of tard-tech. So I'm confused by this issue.
Person X posts an unflattering picture of person Y. How does a search for Person Y bring up Person X's profile?
If a profile is set for viewable by friend's only, how does a Google search get them anything?
Are we only talking about somebody who left their profile viewable by everybody, put it under their real name, location, sex, etc?
'It's typically inappropriate photos like holding up a can of beer at a party,' Saracino said.
I'm willing to bet that over 90% of student applicants have held up a beer at a party. I'm willing to bet that 90% of admission officers held beer at a party before going to college.
Only a tiny tiny minority of the population of the USA wait until they are 21 to start drinking. (from my informal research, most folks seem to start some time round 14-16 which is much as they do in the UK)
Why must everyone pretend nonetheless that they have never drunk alcohol at a party?
VLC Remote for iPhone and Android
Holding a beer can is certainly not a crime and hardly a rare occurrence.
Secondly why is it if a kid was to look up info on his teachers he's stalking them but the school stalking him is perfectly ok?
And, Richard Feynman was of age at that time. So, they would not have turned away Feynman.
It is not that one drinks beer. It is that one is breaking the law by drinking beer and then posting pictures of one's self breaking said law.
Why so many people making this about drinking beer instead of about posting pictures of one's self breaking the law?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
On Facebook you control who can view your profile by (in theory) allowing only people you trust to have access. By default, the most you can see about someone you are not friends with is their main profile picure, their network, and their list of friends (though this can also be disabled through your provacy options of you so wish).
Furthermore, every time someone tags a photo of you, you receive a notification telling you so, and you are free to (permanently) remove this tag if you so wish.
So as far as I see it, a college should have very little chance of obtaining information on you through your Facebook profile unless you specifically grant them this privilege.
At my university, albeit public and large, there's no time "vet" people via online profiles. Going through the application process on the administrative side is entirely too time consuming.
Maybe they're talking about smaller universities or just very visible graduate programs?
Here's a question, has anybody tried suing Facebook/Myspace for loss of reputation or slander because of something that somebody else posted?
This is exactly why I, Bob Taylor, would never associate my online handle with my real name. Because then I, Bob Taylor, would be susceptible to this sort of profiling.
:(){
Bzzzt, wrong.
Most of the rest of us don't live in a country that has an insane law that's there because it's a compromise made with insane puritanical fucktards in order to repeal an even more insane one.
Regards,
Rest of World.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"If you are stupid enough to have sex in public and get photographed doing it, then you absolutely deserve any and all negative consequences you get."
Just remember this if you ever need help from police. If you are stupid enough to walk on the street you deserve whatever will happen (robbery, assassination...). If you are stupid enough not to protect your houme like a bank you diserve somebody "cleaning" it inside out. If you are stupid enough to drive your car, you diserve somebody crashing at you. Etc.
"Behave well, and you have nothing to fear..."
That's one of the stupidest things I read for ages.
This article has spurned an interesting discussion, and many of the issues are considered in this book called The Future of Reputation, which the author has released for free here.
To deter colleges from viewing social networking pages, maybe students could post legal terms of service under which colleges agree to go away and ignore the pages. This idea should not be taken as legal advice for anyont, just something to think about. --Ben http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2007/11/privacy-advocates-such-as-nyu-professor.html
Benjamin Wright, Dallas, Texas, benjaminwright.us
What if a student was photographed skateboarding on the sidewalk? What about a student photographed at a camp fire on the beach? That could be an illegal camp fire. By your standard each of these people should be excluded from college.
What happens if you were savvy and ignored social networking sites all together.
Do they then assume you have no friends/social life and chuck you off the list that way?
It seems like these people in these departments are just being malicious.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
It's called a pseudonym, idiots.
In Denmark, if you have social pictures on Facebook (including pictures of you holding up a beer can), it will just be thought of as portraying you as being a social person - which is a good thing. Really I can't see whats wrong with being happy while drinking beer.
Now it makes a lot more sense in which case to use which.
also
duck lips = rejection letter
emo mirror self portrait = rejection letter
I welcome these changes.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Playing devil's advocate here for a moment...
"Holding this next generation to a higher standard is hypocritical."
Is it? Aren't we, humanity as a whole, supposed to further ourselves? We'd all still be pillaging, plundering and raping en masse, if generations before ours wouldn't have done so, wouldn't we?
I certainly agree that, at least in the premise of the summary's "guy holding up a beer", lines are being crossed a bit - but at the same time, the kids' prior generation (parents) should be educating them on the damage this can have and offer alternatives. Then it's still up to the kids to decide whether to heed that advice, not heed that advice, or rebel against it - but at least they will be more aware of the big picture.
Are "10% of colleges" and "10% of college admissions officers polled" necessarily the same thing?
No.
I can't find any more information about how the study was done.
Conveniently enough, people that don't want to go to schools that do dumb stuff like this will tend to be rejected by schools that do dumb stuff like this.
In addition, schools that do dumb stuff like this will also tend to reject many applicants whose helpful buddies (or stalkers) have posted derogatory information (true or not) about them on the Internet.
Yay.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Breaking the law is breaking the law; whether it is wrong or not depends on the particular law. Politicians cannot define morality.
If a future employer doesn't hire me on the basis that they've discovered I'm in the Facebook group "Down with Haliburton" then that's fine by me. I want nothing to do with any company that favors and allies itself with corrupt capitalism.
Umm... yes? If you are stupid enough to have sex in public and get photographed doing it, then you absolutely deserve any and all negative consequences you get.
It's called living life, who hasn't had sex in a car?
You don't have to have sex in a crowded McDonald's restaurant in order to be seen, you don't even need to be on public land for someone to see you and take a picture.
Secondly, it's not a crime to film sex (unless its of someone else without consent). What if the tape is stolen? or your girlfriend puts it online without your knowledge?
EDIT: Almost forgot to tick AC, so many people I know will read this.
Facebook has an account option to only grant access of various profile features to friends only. Unless the colleges or employers hack into Facebook, or you stupidly grant everybody view of your profile (--It's off by default, right?--), I don't see what the problem is.
I said this once on slashdot but I will say it again.
If you judge me simply by my online presence, then here's a big "FUCK YOU" --Google this! There I said it, what's more? I am a Hispanic rapist that likes to touch little female hamsters. I am 4'7" and I constantly bad mouth everyone. Even myself!
This sure will bite me in the ass someday, and you know what? I don't give a hair.
I would much rather that a college applicant/prospective employee/political candidate was honest about having a beer underage than be dishonest.
Let's face it, very few people haven't had alcohol underage. What else is someone hiding if they are dishonest.
America, Home of the Brave.
"38 percent said it had a "negative impact""
What about the other 62%? Was it all good impact?
'It's typically inappropriate photos -- like holding up a can of beer at a party,'
People using the word "inappropriate"... inappropriately really annoys me. They use it to mean "I don't like it," when the term has an actual meaning.
If holding a drink at a party is "inappropriate", then so is pissing in a toilet.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Both facebook and myspace have privacy settings; and, users have to choose whether they want their profiles public or private. If they set their profiles as public, they OBVIOUSLY want the dean of admissions to see it.
That is, unless its common practice for act differently in the (virtual) presence of varied groups. I sure would hate to think that self-absorbed myspace-obsessed students are two-faced.
But that wouldn't do for the usual marginally accurate, hyperbolic crap that passes for "Stuff that Matters," eh?
Either you are a Stanford and Yale and have a hundred thousand applications swamping the admissions committee. Ot if you are less selective you may not want reject that many candidates at all.
Why so many people making this about drinking beer instead of about posting pictures of one's self breaking the law?
Because I'm Australian and I'm used to sane drinking laws, so it never occurred to me that it might actually be illegal for a college student to buy beer... let alone drink beer at a private party.
For that matter, if the student was at a private party in CA, NV, WY, NM, OK, IA, MO, KY, MS, NY, VA, SC, GA, FL, MD, CT, RI, MA, or NH, they were not necessarily breaking the law.
If you advocate a system where any deviation from expectations is harshly punished, then you deserve to live in a society where everyone is too afraid to speak up, which makes it much easier for various totalitarian movements to gain power. Or do you perhaps think that people stop equating "personal responsibility" with "conformance" when it comes time to vote ?
Someone else behaving against your personal ethics is not irresponsible. Condoms stop both pregnancies and STDs.
You could be PHOTOGRAPHED anywhere. Lack of paranoia does not mean lack of wisdom; trusting someone you on hindsight shouldn't had does not indicate that either. And frankly, your underlying assumption that sex is shameful and thus needs to be hidden from other people is pretty sick. Not to mention your boundless arrogance in equating your personal opinions with wisdom.
Leader is someone who leads. Someone who strives to conform to someone else's - such as yours - expectations is not a leader, but a follower. And again, breaking your moral code does not indicate lack of wisdom.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
on the internet everybody knows you're a dog.
Since when it is at all inappropriate to hold up a beer AT A PARTY? Holding up a beer in your car = inappropriate. Holding up a beer in church = inappropriate. Holding up a beer at a social gathering where alcohol is being served? Appropriate. In fact, going to a party, then NOT having a beer and showing you appreciate it would be inappropriate!
So, college admission people, I want a goddamn answer.... have any of you ever unclenched your anus?