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Hamilton Alumni Review
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My mom saw what?!?Everbody's bulletproof in college, right? You can do all sorts of outrageous things with the reassuring certainty that no one but your closest friends will ever know or, if they know, care. This delusion has been handed down from class to class for many generations, of course, but never has the stage been so large, so well-lit and so potentially permanent as with Facebook. Sarah Moore '09 puts it simply, calling Facebook "an invasion of privacy." Others, though, note that a little self-regulation goes a long way. "I am not too mindful of the way the public discerns my profile," says Leah Delany '08. "I'm college-aged and realize the potential consequences for my actions."Facebook only allows certain people to see certain information about you. On occasion, however, students don't realize the information they do post has the potential to get them into trouble, either now or later. One common mistake is posting pictures commemorating a night of drinking. Posting too much personal or intimate information is often merely a cause for embarrassment, but it can also attract interest from people whose interest you don't want. And then there's that great employer who wants to do a little online background check before hiring you. When it comes to Hamilton's involvement in such issues, don't expect Big Brother to interfere. "We try to stay out of the social-networking realm other than to provide basic common-sense advice," says Smallen, the vice president for IT. For instance, the College gives students detailed information on personal and legal responsibilities regarding file sharing and other digital activity "Some people are concerned and say, 'Shouldn't we be controlling this more?' But I think that kind of concern is really more of an intergenerational concern than anything else," Smallen says. "Today's students just have a different sense of what they consider 'personal' than we did." While Facebook does raise thorny questions about what is private and what is public in the Web 2.0 universe, it is important to remember that users voluntarily post their own personal information, using as much or as little detail as they want when describing themselves and their interests. By this reasoning, the only person you can blame for poor judgment is yourself. "I have a rule of thumb for using Facebook that has made me not regret anything that I have posted," says Liz Mitchell '11. "If my mom would be upset by it, it probably isn't OK to put up." ? |
When you blog, who's talking?
It's always fascinating to me how much a person's "voice" changes depending on the audience. More ... |
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