College Orientations Now Include Social Network Warnings

Posted on August 4, 2006

USA Today has an interesting article about how college orientations this fall include warnings about the dangers of blogs and social networks. The students are also told about how students can later came to regret postings and profiles they have made.

From large public schools such as Western Kentucky to smaller private ones like Birmingham-Southern and Smith, colleges around the country have revamped their orientation talks to students and parents to include online behavior. Others, Susquehanna University and Washington University in St. Louis among them, have new role-playing skits on the topic that students will watch and then break into smaller groups to discuss.
Facebook, geared toward college students and boasting 7.5 million registered users, is a particular focus. But students are also hearing stories about those who came to regret postings to other online venues, from party photos on sites such as Webshots.com to comments about professors in blogs.
"The particular focus is the public nature of this," said Tracy Tyree, Susquehanna's dean of student life. "That seems to be what surprises students most. They think of it as part of their own little world, not a bigger electronic world."

Hopefully, they are also telling students that everyone from police to potential employers have used blogs and social networks to find out more information about individuals. And what about videos and YouTube? User-submitted videos could potentially be considerably more embarrassing and career harming.

The impact and popularity of social networks is remarkable. The article says that incoming freshman to one college already met online before school began and formed a Class of 2010 group on Facebook.

The sites actually help with one of the major goals of orientation: bonding. At Birmingham Southern, dozens of members of the incoming class of about 350 had already formed a Class of 2010 Facebook group long before the start of school.
"That's great," said Renie Moss, the school's dean of students. "That's what should be happening, forming that camaraderie. But we're hoping to just maybe give the students a moment to pause and make sure they put out something they can be proud of."

That's probably happening already at many colleges -- freshman showing up at college having already made new friends online during the summer.