College Papers Won't Rewrite History For Alumni

Hugh Pickens writes "The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that as college papers have begun digitizing their back issues, their Web sites have become the latest front in the battle over online identities. Youthful activities like underage drinking that once would have disappeared into the recesses of a campus library are now preserved on the public record, and alumni are contacting newspapers with requests for redaction. Unlike with Facebook profiles, that other notable source of young-adult embarrassment, the affected parties can't remove or edit questionable content. In 2007, a Cornell University alum sued the Cornell Chronicle over a newly digitized article from 1983 that reported he had been charged with burglary while a student at Cornell. The alum found the article after Googling his name and claimed that its new presence online was causing him 'mental anguish' and 'loss of reputation.' But a California judge threw out the case after determining the report to be accurate. Some student papers, like The University Daily Kansan, have found a middle ground by adding the noindex meta tag so that the documents stay online, but search engines such as Google do not index them. 'I thought that would be better than kind of like sticking it to [the alum] and saying the paper is always right and we can publish anything on the Web we want,' says the paper's editor."

Comments

once something has happened no unhappening for you

[randuev]

isn't it obvious, that once something has happened it cannot be erased from history of this light cone? the only thing you could possibly do about events in your past is to provide an alternative version preferably as soon as this happened. i have plenty of record online under my real name, of course there are some things that are embarassing to me ages ago, but plenty of time has went past :)

Simple Solution.

[supernova_hq]

Don't want your stupid college actions preserved forever? Don't do stupid things!

Re:Simple Solution.

[spottedkangaroo]

The problem for alums like this is that tweens don't often think as clearly as their 30/40 iteration would wishes.

Re:Simple Solution.

[hitmark]

Optionally, make the adult world understand that stupid things done at earlier age do not mean that they are guaranteed to repeat said stupidity at a later age...

The thinking these days seems to be that we are robots, with set behavior cut in stone at a early age, with no ability to alter that except when guided by trained professionals in a controlled environment.

Re:Simple Solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, "tween" refers to pre-adolescents.

Re:Simple Solution.

[MrMista_B]

Don't do stupid things? Don't be human!

Re:Simple Solution.

[owlstead]

That's true of course, but a bit too simple. Often these kind of public stories can punish somebody much more than the original sentence, even if there was one. Personally, I know that I've made mistakes in my life (although none too serious). I would not want that each of these results stay online forever. This is however something you'll have to deal with nowadays.

Still, I would like that public institutions would think twice before (re-)publishing stories with names in them. Especially when it is with publications that are not easily verified such as student papers, where the articles have not been written by trained individuals. It might be that even the authors may have problems with that; even though the articles may provide a nice insight in the institution, the writers themselves probably weren't writing articles for the whole world to view. That law student that made a prank article about canabis probably did not want the whole world to browse his comments now that he/she is a full grown judge.

Removing the indexing does seem to be a nice middle ground. And we should train the current students (including those in lower classes) that anything you publish today will be become available forever. There's no such thing as a limited number of copies anymore. Some person will always scan something and put it on the internet, now or later on.

Re:Simple Solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the advice, Mr. Perfect. Unfortunately, that superficially perfect suggestion is actually rather stupid.

Young people need to be able to do stupid things within a context of safety and forgetting in order to learn about themselves and the world. If someone's every action will be on record for the rest of their life, then they will feel unnecessary pressure to stay neatly within the lines and remain naive and unworldly for fear of the consequences. It would stifle their creativity, their adventurousness, and consequently their outlook on the world and everything affected by that.

Re:Simple Solution.

[Frequency Domain]

That's a stupid comment if there ever was one. I mean, as kids, you're supposed to know that you're doing something stupid?

If the guy cited in the summary were a minor I'd agree with you. However, if he were a minor the paper couldn't print his name. But a college age kid doing burglary? Yeah, he should know he's doing something stupid.

Re:Simple Solution.

[hitmark]

And would not the first step towards taking responsibility, being honest about what one have done, rather then to try and cover that up?

I would say its not important if the person did something stupid or not, as long as the person understand that what one did was stupid and do not plan to do so again if the chance presents itself.

And i would not say that x number of years living is adult or not. Life is a continual learning experience, and i would say that adult comes when one can show that one have taken to heart the values and expectations there is of an "adult" in society, not when some amount of years have been accumulated.

One yardstick i would want to use tho, is that of harming others. if someone can grasp that a action have the potential to harm someone else, and therefor refuses to do so, i would say the person is adult, or at least behaving as one. This based on seeing kids tormenting animals, insects and each other, because they can, and because the tormented reacts in a potentially amusing way. Yes, there are times and places where harming others are, if not needed, the only available option. But if the person approaches that time and place with reluctance, and stops when the minimal harm needed have been performed, the person still to be seen as a adult. Or at least, that's my opinion on the subject.

Re:Simple Solution.

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I'm not so sure that burglary should be mandatory behaviour for students. I'm pretty sure that most people know that burglary is a stupid thing to do, and are aware of the consequences.

Besides, the relatively harmless (in the long term) stupid stuff isn't exactly newsworthy. It's only if you do something really stupid that you get such mental anguish causing and reputation destroying stories in the newspaper.

Re:Simple Solution.

[Dogtanian]

This is public information that was published publicly, there is no expectation [my emphasis] that it would become private after some time.

See, you talk about "expectation", but the Internet- or anything like it- wasn't on anyone's horizon in 1983 (I doubt that even the academics that used it knew it would be so important and all-pervasive 25 years later).

What you say is technically correct, but doesn't account for how the Internet changed the implications of something being "public"- and *that* is what people would not have expected back then.

At the time, reports would have appeared in newspapers and been prominent for a short while. They would have remained "public", but without any simple way to search them, let alone easily available to any random person with a cheap computer, they wouldn't have been found without good reason and some work.

My point being while you can argue whether or not "our mistakes [being] serious enough" should warrant them becoming "a matter of public record", but you can't deny the fact that after 25 years the Internet has changed the fundamental implications of something being on the "public record", even- or especially- things that became public before the Internet was a factor, in ways which wouldn't have been considered back then.

Re:Just like email recall

[timmarhy]

exchange server allows it. your shitout of luck if it's across the internet though. really if your a twit when your young the best course of action is to admit you were an idiot and say you've learnt from your actions.

it's rather retarded to think some 50 yo CFO who has had an outstanding career is any less capable because he was arrested for drunk and disorderly 30 years ago. frankly i find such things refreshing knowing the big guns are human as well.

Re:once something has happened no unhappening for

[Jurily]

isn't it obvious, that once something has happened it cannot be erased from history of this light cone?

As even the summary mentioned, the problem is not that it's archived: it's instantly searchable.

Just for fun, I found a picture about myself drunk in 3 minutes with Google. Of course I know what I was looking for, and anyone else has no chance whatsoever to identify me now, but there you go.

P.S. I'm not even registered on any social networking site.

You're Awesome.

[reddburn]

Don't want your stupid college actions preserved forever? Don't do stupid things!

Thanks for your "insightful" words (great job, mods)! I'll be sure to relay that information to myself as a 19 year old the next time I'm twelve years in the past.

It happens, so what

[Anonymous Coward]

A print of this has been taped to my wall.

Everything we have done has been done because it seemed good at the time for the motives we had at the time and to those personalities we were then.

If I ever meet a company that chooses not to hire me because they can google my political/religious/ideological views, find out that I partied a lot in college or something like that, it isn't a good company to work for anyways. I am sure that even the folks in HR realize that people change over time and them being able to find my LiveJournal account from my teen years doesn't mean that I am still that angsty. But I also see no reason to be embarrassed that I was like that at the time.

At least there is some consolation

[Coeurderoy]

At least there is some consolation in the fact that having done something stupid in your past, will drive away the idiots...
At least the ones who believe that you couldn't possibly evolve, and that what you did at 18 defines what you'll be able to do at 30 away.

Of course it does help if you also did a couple of interesting stuff in the interim....

Face it, life has consequences

[argStyopa]

Personally, I don't even think that they should use the "noindex" tag, either.

Perhaps at some point, someone will get it through their thick skulls that choices often have consequences, and these consequences can come back to bite you in the ass years, even decades later.

Every generation has its wild years, but I believe it really became institutionalized with the Baby Boomers, who ran rampant through the 60's and (largely) would like the rest of us to forget that ever happened. From the relatively trivial use of minor drugs, to trying to murder police officers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Soliah) - one cannot escape the consequences of their decisions.

It seems that today our entire culture wants the government system to warp into a giant "fix my situation" agency, meant to redress the grievances of individuals' pasts - even if self-inflicted. Like to have multiple piercings, tattoos, and wear purple hair? Don't be shocked if the investment bank that had the awesome paying job that you were perfectly qualified for decides to balk once they meet you. If you live below sea level in some crappy tenement, perhaps you should pay EXTRA attention to hurricane warnings looming over your city? If you decide to party your high school years away, and pop out babies while you're a teen - surprise! Odds are that the REST OF YOUR LIFE WILL SUCK (and odds are good that your babies' lives will suck TOO - congratulations, you've managed to ruin more lives than just your own!). Are you poor? Odds are likely that you dropped out of school, are a drug/substance abuser, or made some other shitty life choice that you're paying for now.

I know it's very passe and old fashioned to suggest anything but the modern vogue of heedless narcissism, but there's a REASON our formerly-successful culture praised hard work, self-restraint, delayed gratification, and self-reliance: because these qualities, instilled early, are key indicators toward a LIFETIME of moderate comfort and security. No, that might not mean that you get to have all the fun you want, fucking/smoking/partying your way through your teens and twenties. But if you don't want to spend the NEXT 40 years of your life digging ditches, cleaning drains, or working the fry baskets at McDonald's, you *might* just want to take the long view, champ.

Re:not a prank, a CRIME

[Stiletto]

The guy was arrested for burglary. It is necessary for him to respond, for the rest of his life, in every job/dating/whatever situation to "what happened?".

Actually, no. Assuming he did his time and repaid his debt to society, he shouldn't be punished for a crime for the rest of his life.

If you really believe that one should have to answer for a crime (and, presumably, be denied employment/housing/etc. because of it) for the rest of one's life, then why not just institute life sentences for every little crime?

Re:once something has happened no unhappening for

[fishbowl]

There is a picture of me, blind drunk, talking to two police officers (who were working for my organization) because I had to arrange for them to take me to the bank with about $65,000 in cash, the drop from the tickets and beer sales of a large event that I was organizing. The picture was published in the local paper and I really thought it was a great shot... and of course since that was before the digital era, I cannot find it.

I'm *proud* of my drunken stupor years. What I don't understand is how your reputation and self-esteem have become so weak that you are worried about what others might think about things that have been recorded about you?

Be *proud* that you stood up against the war, or that you were a marijuana legalization activist, or whatever it is you're hiding from now. Don't be a hypocrite.

Cynical view

[davidwr]

College burglary. I don't know anything about the case. Did he steal beer? Who cares? It happened in 1983 and if he continued to be a criminal, he'd more than likely be behind bars.

They cynical view:

*Person gets caught doing something stupid or illegal a long time ago
*Person hasn't gotten caught since
*Conclusion: They've honed their craft and are very unlikely to get caught

Result:
*If I'm looking to hire someone for something no good, I want this guy
*If I'm looking for a responsible person, I want to avoid him

I did say that was the cynical view. It's not the realistic view. If an HR department thinks like this, you don't want to work for them anyways.