Colleges Should Disclose If They'll Ditch You As An Applicant Over Your Tweets And Such
Once again, colleges are revealing themselves to be bastions of un-free speech by ditching applicants over their tweets or other online posts.
Oops, as the NYT article by Natasha Singer points out, sometimes there's more than one person with a certain name and sometimes people make fake accounts in somebody's name. Kind of serious if it means you can't get into your college of choice because some idiot administrator hasn't figured that out.
This creeped me out:
Last year, an undergraduate at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., who had befriended a prospective student on Facebook, notified the admissions office because he noticed that the applicant had posted offensive comments about one of his high school teachers."We thought, this is not the kind of person we want in our community," Angel B. Perez, Pitzer's dean of admission and financial aid, told me. With about 4,200 applications annually for a first-year class of 250 students, the school can afford to be selective. "We didn't admit the student," Mr. Perez said.
And some do disclose and some don't:
Colleges vary in their transparency. While Pitzer doesn't contact students if their social media activities precluded admission to the school, Colgate University does notify students if they are eliminated from the applicant pool for any reason other than being uncompetitive candidates."We should be transparent with applicants," says Gary L. Ross, Colgate's dean of admission. He once called a student, to whom Colgate had already offered acceptance, to check whether an alcohol-related incident that was reported online was indeed true. (It was, and Colgate rescinded the offer of admission.)
"We will always ask if there is something we didn't understand," Mr. Ross said.
And I can see a new job rising out of this -- social media scrub coach:
In an effort to help high school students avoid self-sabotage online, guidance counselors are tutoring them in scrubbing their digital identities. At Brookline High School in Massachusetts, juniors are taught to delete alcohol-related posts or photographs and to create socially acceptable email addresses. One junior's original email address was "bleedingjesus," said Lenny Libenzon, the school's guidance department chairman. That changed."They imagine admissions officers are old professors," he said. "But we tell them a lot of admissions officers are very young and technology-savvy."
Likewise, high school students seem to be growing more shrewd, changing their searchable names on Facebook or untagging themselves in pictures to obscure their digital footprints during the college admission process.
"We know that some students maintain two Facebook accounts," says Wes K. Waggoner, the dean of undergraduate admission at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
For their part, high school seniors say that sanitizing social media accounts doesn't seem qualitatively different than the efforts they already make to present the most appealing versions of themselves to colleges. While Megan Heck, 17, a senior at East Lansing High School in Michigan, told me that she was not amending any of her posts as she applied early to colleges this month, many of her peers around the country were.
"If you've got stuff online you don't want colleges to see," Ms. Heck said, "deleting it is kind of like joining two more clubs senior year to list on your application to try to make you seem more like the person they want at their schools."
And sure, these are statements that are made public when put out on social media, but a college application is a thing you fill out. They aren't sending a private detective to peer in your windows and follow you to work.
If they were, that should be disclosed, too.
Commenter Michelle at the NYT's site, gets the problem here:
Michelle, Chicago The danger in judging prospective students, or prospective employees on their public speech not related to academic or work performance, is the same in policing speech in any area. It might seem like common sense to exclude someone for rude comments or profanity, or for alcohol related behavior. But what about other things someone might find out through an online search? Should someone be denied a college admission because she's a teenage parent? Or is gay? What about someone's political activities or religion? Would a college be justified in denying admission because the admissions' officer is offended by a political opinion expressed in a tweet, on a FB page, or in the comments section of a NYTimes article? The internet is the 21st century equivalent of discussions in the town square, except now, colleges, employers, and the government have the technological capability to surveil every town square. In a free society, people should not have to worry that their words will be used against them in a way that will limit their freedom or economic opportunity. Which is exactly what these admissions officers are doing. How ironic that universities are supposed to be bastions of intellectual freedom, when exercising that freedom can keep you from entering in the first place.
Another commenter had a great point as well
Gustavo Corral, NYC What is the lesson that colleges are trying to teach? To scrub your profile and present a socially acceptable face? Because that is going to be the consequence of punishing every faux pas of 18 yr. olds.Gone are the days when youthful rebellion was respected. The generation of the 60s and 70s has grown up and now they are in charge of the world. Now lack of sensitivity might as well be lack of wisdom. These are the same people who would have executed Socrates as a disruptive influence on society.
Our society used to mean something. FREEDOM used to be a big part of what it meant. But what freedom is there if everything is demurred?
via KateC
Far as I'm concerned, anyone who needs a scrub coach to tell him not to put damaging information about himself online is too dumb to be going to college.
Rex Little at November 9, 2013 11:29 PM
Far as I'm concerned, anyone who needs a scrub coach to tell him not to put damaging information about himself online is too dumb to be going to college.
Posted by: Rex Little at November 9, 2013 11:29 PM
True, but a better idea would be for colleges to have some kind of objective standard, rather than screening application essays for social consciousness and sensitivity, and rejecting whites and asians for picky stuff like politically incorrect face book posts,
I can almost guarantee that, if you are a minority, those pictures of you in your Che T shirt, gets you automatic admittance.
They could cut their admissions office by 2/3s and just run the data through a computer.
But, that might yield an equitable result. Better to massage the data with a million bucks worth of bureaucrats.
Isab at November 10, 2013 5:20 AM
Let me get this right, students cannot post anything controversial on Facebook or other social media. Yet professors complain that this generation of students does not know how to debate or assert themselves. They just go along with the people in authority. Hmmmm. Could there be any correlation?
Jen at November 10, 2013 6:36 AM
Will tweets or blog posts by adjuncts be used when considering them for employment or tenure? If so, explain Hugo S at PCC.
KateC at November 10, 2013 7:19 AM
Well I was looking for the teacher fired for being pictured with a beer on FB; and this came up: Laraine Cook, High School Coach, Fired Over Facebook Photo That Shows Fiance Holding Her Breast.
She was fired but her fiance wasn't.
But how does that rise to bad behavior?
Jim P. at November 10, 2013 7:46 AM
If I was at Facebook or Twitter, I'd be horrified that schools (or employers) were doing this as it turns "social media" from some form of social positive means of communication to yet another database to scrub and clean and worry over. I'd worry about it because it turns my employment from contributing to a positive into a negative.
And I'd worry about how it would affect the value of FB in the future, drive off kids and negatively affect the financials.
If I were at Facebook or Twitter, whenever I found institutions doing this, I'd toss everyone one of their institutional accounts off Facebook or Twitter and replace them with a page warning prospective students away.
jerry at November 10, 2013 8:29 AM
Middle daughter is a high school senior, and at a visit to a large Eastern state university last week, the admissions representative assured us that the school used 26 (count 'em) different factors in admissions, further asserting that someone who got a perfect score on the ACT wasn't necessarily guaranteed admission.
Really? A perfect ACT won't make you a shoo-in? On the other hand, I didn't see social media activity listed as one of those factors.
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at November 10, 2013 9:28 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2013/11/10/colleges_should.html#comment-4044566">comment from Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com)Oh, and every which way, you're fucked. If you say nothing provocative, maybe no one will follow you on Twitter. But then there's this Thomas Friedman column:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/opinion/sunday/friedman-why-i-still-support-obamacare.html
Amy Alkon at November 10, 2013 12:38 PM
One employer … wouldn’t look at any applicant for a marketing job who didn’t have at least 2,000 Twitter followers — and the more the better.
For a marketing job this actually makes sense, since it's all about getting out there and drawing attention. For a back-office cubicle-drone position, a lot of Twitter activity would be a drawback, suggesting the applicant might have trouble focusing on work.
Rex Little at November 10, 2013 11:14 PM
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