Housing Pros

Facebook.com: How Cyber Communities are affecting our Campus Communities

By Meg Gregory, Director of Housing & Residence Life at Alaska Pacific University

Remember the “good ol’ days” when to keep up with friends; students actually went down the hall to see them? When they organized a party, they had to pick up a phone (one that still had a cord attached to it)? To get a date, students had to have some chemistry? Well, with the modern miracle of online communities, students can manage their friends and relationships without ever taking their hands off the keyboard!

If the scenario above strikes a chord with you, then like us, you have probably been feeling the challenges that come with working with students who may be more connected with their keyboard than they are with their roommate. But, the fact remains that in today’s techno-centric world, Student Affairs professionals will continually be challenged to keep up with and adapt to the changes and advances of our increasingly “plugged in” student populations. Perhaps the greatest technological craze currently facing us on our campuses today is the phenomenal student use and participation in online digital communities, with the best known among them being Facebook.com

Though other online communities, such as MySpace, Xanga and Friendster are popular among students, Facebook has gathered much attention in the media lately, both in national news circles as well as student papers, surrounding the sheer number of students who have joined and made it a part of their daily routine. Just since its arrival at our campus this past fall, we have already begun to deal with repercussions from the information and photos posted in our campus’s Facebook directory. Because we were not sure how Facebook was affecting other universities, we decided to dive in, do some exploring and research to help guide us on our campus as well as share ideas and strategies with fellow professionals.

Some Facebook Basics

Launched just two years ago in 2004 at Harvard University as an “online directory that connects people through social networks,” Facebook now has roughly 8.5 million registered users at over 2,000 colleges and universities in the United States and overseas. For campuses with a Facebook directory, 80% of their student population is typically a registered user. It is estimated that 60% of Facebook members log in daily and 85% log in at least once a week. What these numbers all add up to is a free service that is currently valued at around $100 million dollars.

Because Facebook is free for students to use and offers an easy and fun interface, it is not surprising that students have incorporated “facebooking” into their daily routine. What can students do on Facebook you ask? They can customize a profile sharing their music, movie, TV. show or book interests, where they are from, their hobbies, classes they are currently taking, the all-important relationship status, as well as their address, phone number, age & birthday, and other personal information that have led some to call Facebook a stalker’s paradise. In addition to these profile information fields, students can also upload a limitless amount of photos on their profile and also become socially active by joining “groups” through Facebook – both official university sanctioned groups such as the “Drama Club,” or Facebook-generated groups such as “Famous for My Drinking” or “Dorm Codes.”

The Positive Potential

Before gasping in shock and horror, it is important to step back and look at some of the positive things that Facebook has to offer. First of all, the creators of Facebook have to be credited for developing a service that students were clearly looking for: a quick and easy way to find and communicate with others with common interests. A registered Facebook user can click on the hyperlink of their interest in cross-country skiing and instantly pull up the profiles of other students at their university who also listed cross-country skiing as a hobby. The ease of this can help our students become more connected to one another and the university thanks to Facebook. In addition to making new friends & connections, many students are also using Facebook to maintain friendships with friends from high school. Because some students may end up going to college very far from home (or very very far away in the case of our students in Alaska), the students love the fact that they can share photos with friends & family back home with relative ease through Facebook. In addition to these social factors, students can also get connected with fellow classmates by searching the “courses” option within the profiles. Looking for a new way to get the word out to your students about an event? You can create events and invitations (similar to e-vites) through Facebook at no cost at all. Or, for a mere $9 per day, you can post a “Facebook Announcement” that every student at your school will see as a banner on the side of the Facebook screen when they log in. An opportunity for that type of targeted advertising could hardly be easier to come by.

The Danger Zones

However, it was not the potentials of Facebook that prompted us to start looking into this program and service at first. It was the pitfalls: the photos that the underage students posted in their profiles of drinking in their residence hall rooms, the illegal party advertised on the event calendar, and the sheer amount of information that students were posting in a public forum that concerned us. Plus, if students are spending so much time logging in to Facebook each day, what have they cut out of their schedule? Are they able to get as much genuine human interaction as before? How much does their online social time detract from time usually spent studying or being out & active on campus? Is it possible that students could get “addicted” to Facebook? At our campus, we also found that Facebook sped up the “drama” factor of spreading gossip and rumors more quickly around campus. As we began responding to these issues as they arose, we basically discovered that our students had a false sense about how secure the information they posted and shared in this online forum truly was, and as a result, policy violations and other issues that might not have surfaced before were being advertised, photographed and documented all thanks to Facebook.

Administrator Response Strategies

In researching the response from other campuses to these pitfalls of Facebook, we found a broad range. On the more stringent side were the campuses that were totally blocking any access to Facebook from the campus network altogether or choosing to regularly police Facebook for violations. On the other side of the spectrum were those that chose to use Facebook information selectively or avoid and otherwise ignore the existence of Facebook altogether. In our case at APU, we decided on the “if you can’t beat ‘em, then join ‘em” philosophy. We feel that Facebook does offer several positive features for students, and because its popularity shows no sign of waning anytime soon, it is likely that Facebook will remain an installation on most campuses for the immediate future and it would be in our best interest to be a part of it.

Therefore, if it is brought to our attention that a student has posted a photo of activities against our campus policies, we will treat it as we would with any other policy violation and really use it as an opportunity to have a teachable moment with the students about the reality of “privacy” on the Internet. Legally, if a student posts information in a public forum, such as Facebook, they have waived their right to privacy. Though many students view Facebook as a “closed community” for students only, we talk with them about the reality that any person with an “.edu” email address can login: students, RAs, administrators, faculty, and alumni. We also talk with the students about the fact that many employers are now using Facebook checks to screen applicants and caution students about what messages their “digital résumé” reveals about themselves. There are security & privacy settings on Facebook, and though students are aware of them, few students actually take the steps to do so and we encourage them to be a little more on the “paranoid” side of their privacy settings.

What can you do on your campus? Here are a few simple suggestions to help you & your staff as you decide on how to respond to Facebook related incidents on your campus: