Banning student athlete use of DSN sites

28th June 2006

posted in disruptive-technology, isafety, socialnetworking |

Here’s a new way to approach digital social networking (DSN), but in higher education contexts– threaten student athletes with revocation of their scholarships if they don’t delete their online profiles on DSN websites and stop using these sites altogether. That’s what is happening at Kent State apparently. Normally we read about K-12 school districts banning student access to sites like MySpace, Bebo, Xanga and Facebook from school campuses with content filtering solutions. This time, however, the context is higher education, and it is the athletic department banning student athletes from having profiles on a specific site: Facebook. Is this a violation of student athlete 1st amendment rights? I think it probably is. According to the article, “Kent banning athlete Web profiles”:

But soon, Kent State’s nearly 400 athletes will be banned from Facebook — not by the Web site, but by university administrators. 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.

Many universities also warn students against putting personal information on such online sites out of concern that it makes them targets for predators, and some schools review the sites for evidence of wrongdoing. Kennedy said some Kent students who list phone numbers and addresses have been contacted inappropriately, either by strangers or sports agents.

Although Kennedy said he regrets limiting the students’ ability to communicate, he sees it as a necessary step. “It would be irresponsible on our part if this led to something serious,” he said.

Protecting students from themselves and reactionarily banning access and prohibiting behavior– these responses are more typical than atypical when DSN is involved, I think. Again as I’ve written before, technology is more a window to behavior that is problematic rather than the problem itself. No surprise that the ACLU is likely to get involved on behalf of the students. According to the article, quoting Gary Daniels, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio:

“There’s no clear connection between their roles as athletes and their use of these Web sites,” Daniels said. “For the government to say that you can’t engage in First Amendment activities, they better have a really good reason. And saying, ‘I don’t want them to do it’ is not a good-enough reason.”

There are some good points raised in the article, however. Many students ARE using DSN sites unsafely by sharing too much personal info, including contact info and daily schedules. The article states:

Greg Seibert, director of security and compliance for Kent State, said all students, not just athletes, face safety issues with networking sites. By posting their addresses, class schedules and what bars they go to, they put themselves at risk, he said. “That’s pretty much a blueprint if you want to stalk me,” he said.

This sort of common-sense approach to internet safety and specifically using DSN sites safely is also advocated by Kevin and Dale Farnham, in their new book “MySpace Safety: 51 Tips for Teens and Parents.” I have just started reading it, put already have picked up a lot of good tips. On pages 168-169, they remind both young people and adults that information posted online can and may “live forever.” In respect to information posted to MySpace, they write:

The pages may be accessible as cached versions of the live web pages that used to exist on MySpace… The reality is: any information you make available on any blog or Web site on the Internet immediately ceases to be fully under your control… Data you enter into MySpace lasts forever. You should assume that it may be archived and available somewhere on the Internet for a very long time into the future.

We definitely need to do a better job educating each other about not only what is safe and unsafe to post on DSN sites, but also what is appropriate given the potential longevity of digital archives. Again as I’ve written before, banning and blocking sites– or prohibiting all DSN activities by young people, is an insufficient response. Education and conversation is the only real, viable answer to the issues raised here. Teens are online, and that is really OK! We need to work to help them communicate safely online– and we need to address root causes of problems that are making adults uncomfortable– like the university athletic administrators in this article apparently– rather than just trying to “hush them up.” We should be a lot more concerned about actual alcohol abuse by college athletes than by the fact some are posting pictures of themselves online drinking.

Thanks to Patrick Dierschke for sharing this link!

On this day..

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 28th, 2006 at 11:41 pm and is filed under disruptive-technology, isafety, socialnetworking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.