 "Photo: photo from: CollegeHumor.com")
Since Facebook exploded onto the scene a few years ago and sites like MySpace and LiveJournal have come into common use, college students have found themselves increasingly interconnected with their peers and the outside world.
At UTD, campus officials agree that the Internet can be a positive medium - speeding up the timeliness of communication and broadening marketing and promotional possibilities.
However, websites such as Facebook and MySpace can also be a liability in all arenas. Some departments and organizations at UTD have been educating students on proper usage of the Internet, while others have developed or are developing policies that will regulate how students use social networking sites.
A scroll through Facebook profiles shows the full names of students, their majors, place of employment, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, instant messaging screen names, links to personal blogs and Waterview Park Apartment addresses.
Dean of Students Donna Rogers is a member of the Facebook community and has an active account. She said she has been referred to inappropriate Facebook pictures previously, though she does not monitor the site on a regular basis.
She has called students on occasion to suggest they reconsider the posting of photos which were risque, though not in violation of UTD disciplinary rules. However, if she were to need evidence for a case of criminal activity such as underage drinking, Facebook would fall under the realm of permissible evidence, she said.
Rogers said UTD has educated freshmen at orientations on proper usage of social networking sites. Certain behavior online could also fall under violation of the disciplinary code, which bans unbecoming conduct such as pranks and public nudity.
Lynn Rossi Scott, an attorney with the Dallas law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, has visited the campus twice to educate students on the legal implications of what they should post on the Internet.
"You cannot necessarily take (inappropriate pictures) down, and you leave yourself open for police, for campus administration, for professors, for your mom and potential employers to get that information," Scott said. "My advice to college students is: 'Don't put anything on the internet that contradicts who you want to be someday.'"
A scroll through public Facebook pictures shows a variety of snapshots of students' lives, from the innocent to the risqué. Alongside sunny vacation photos are pictures of students drinking, smoking, wearing skimpy costumes at Halloween and theme parties and smooching significant others.
Some online profiles list personal information, such as sexual orientation, age, home addresses, phone numbers, political leanings and diatribes on personal problems or issues.
"I don't think it's in the consciousness of college students yet that this isn't a diary. This isn't just me talking to my friends," Scott said.
Hello, Facebook. Goodbye, Job?
One trend that has been building in recent years is the growing use of the Internet by recruiters searching for background on an applicant.
A careerbuilder.com survey published Oct. 26, 2006, reported that 26 percent of hiring managers use search engines to check on potential hirees. Half of the manager respondents said they dismissed job candidates based on what they found using a search engine. Sixty-three percent crossed a candidate off their lists because of what he or she had put on a social networking site.
Eliminations came after managers learned via the Web that candidates had lied about their qualifications, posted inappropriate pictures, bad-mouthed previous companies or employees, showed evidence of criminal behavior or discussed drinking or drug use, among other reasons.
"Recruiters want to visit people online," said Michael Doty, director of career services at the Career Center. "That's not necessarily a good thing because of what students are putting out there."
While Career Center staffers will patrol their own listings to take down, say, an employer who is requesting female-only applicants, sites like Facebook and MySpace give employers ways to discriminate through photos and profile information such as gender, age, race and sexuality.
"That's what students don't understand, it's public domain - anyone can see it," Doty said.
Scott said she has represented educational entities who had fired employees after discovering inappropriate materials posted online.
"When you put stuff out there ... you set yourself up for an adverse employment action," Scott said.
Consider the following:
• At Penn State, a columnist for the Daily Collegian was fired after students protested comments he made on a Facebook group opposed to a campus cancer fundraiser, according to U.S. News & World Report.
• A mentor at a dormitory at Adelphi University also was fired after a Facebook picture showed him with a beer in hand at the residence hall, which is against the rules, according to The Delphian.
• In July, social networking site Ziggs fired its intern after discovering he had written online about "screwing around on IM" and "talking to (his) friends and getting paid for it," according to C.M. Russell at www.secretsofthejobhunt.blogspot.com
• In January, two employees were fired from a Canadian company, Farm Boys, after posting on Facebook, according to the Ottawa Sun. One of them said he had only been joking in a post that was taken literally by his managers to be an admission of stealing from the company.
Student Groups' Image
Sometimes photos created by a few can cast a negative shadow on an entire organization. On the popular national humor website, www.collegehumor.com, The Mercury found three photos that included nude or partially nude women with UTD Greek insignias written on their bodies.
UTD Greek Life Advisor Briana Lemos said the pictures were disappointing, especially given that UTD Greeks have worked to improve their image on campus in the past two-plus years.
"People see Greek letters, they don't know the difference between the groups, so you are representing the whole," Lemos said. "When stuff like this comes out, they do work to correct it ... It's not taken lightly."
One photo, posted Sept. 22, 2005, shows a female naked from the waist up. In black marker, the words "UTD ZBT" are scrawled on her navel. Two hands stamped with the words "College Humor" cover her breasts. The photo is labeled "GET OUT THE WAY, I WANT TO SEE BOOBIES!"
Zeta Beta Tau President Billy Scullion said no one from ZBT's active roster is in the picture, but added he knew disciplinary action had been taken after the picture was posted in 2005. He declined to elaborate.
Scullion said he had asked everyone in his chapter if they knew who posted it, with no results. Had a person in the active roster admitted to taking the picture, ZBT's judicial board would have dealt the punishment, he said.
Scullion added he felt it was possible another group had posted the picture.
"I feel like this is an old picture and I don't feel like this is a correct representation of us," Scullion said. "I've tried to do what I can ... It is what it is. I don't know what you can really do."
Another photo, posted March 3, 2006 shows a female naked from the waist up with an insignia for Chi Phi written in cream across her chest, and UTD on her navel. The poster is identified as Maverick_Chi_Phi_UTD, and the photo is titled, "And here's to boobs, Mrs. Robinson."
Chi Phi President John Pace said that the member who had posted the picture was given a warning. The reason there wasn't harsher punishment, Pace said, was because each case is evaluated on a situational basis.
The female in the picture consented to have it taken, and was not inebriated at the time, Pace said.
Pace said the member had tried to get the pictures taken down, but could not.
"It makes me upset, but there's nothing I can do about it. I wish it hadn't happened," Pace said. "We're putting controls in place to make sure it won't happen again."
Pace said the group has an Internet policy, and members regularly monitor Facebook. They ask members and non-members to take down inappropriate photos that may adversely affect a member if, for example, a potential employer were to see it.
"All this stuff is really new," Pace said. "Nobody had to deal with this five years ago."
One photo, dated Aug. 3, 2005, is posted by a person who is identified as from UTD, shows a girl in her underwear, with the words "Rush KE (Kappa Sigma)" written above the pantyline. The title reads, "Why don't we forget about this Greek nonsense and see boobies? It's always all business with you guys."
Kappa Sigma President Keith Hanson said the picture was inappropriate, but the date it was posted was not during his tenure as president. He said he would try to get the picture taken down.
"We're not supposed to post things like that," Hanson said. "It's not only slandering our name, but it's slandering UTD's name."
Scullion and Pace both said they had tried to get the photos taken down from the website, but could not. Scullion said he did not know who submitted the photo, so he could not request the person take it down.
Pace said he had been told by the member who submitted the photo that College Humor did not allow pictures to be deleted.
However, an e-mail from College Humor in response to a Mercury inquiry contradicted them.
"Since when do CollegeHumor.com's policies not allow for the removal of an item? That's not true," wrote Dan Gurewitch, a writer for the website. "If you're not the person who submitted the picture ... and you'd like it removed, all you need to do is contact us. Simply send me a link to the web address of the picture(s) you'd like removed, and I'll delete them. No harm, no foul."
As of press time, all three pictures were still on the website.
Athletes
Athletics directors, particularly those at NCAA schools, have raised concerns and developed policies in recent years regarding what athletes post on the Internet. The same goes at UTD, where Director of Athletics Chris Gage says UTD athletics department officials are developing an Internet usage policy, probably for launch this fall, that will guide athletes to moderate their online activities.
"What are we going to try to accomplish with the policy? First of all, that's going to be safety and welfare of our student athletes," Gage said.
He said there have been concerns with sexual predators tracking down athletes, who are more often in the public eye than some students. There have also been cases of harassing messages being sent to students.
Gage said the department will also take into account recent cases across the nation of inappropriate photos getting students in trouble or showing them engaging in criminal activity.
"The thing that we want to prevent is any of our student athletes using Facebook and then it coming back as a negative to them," Gage said.
He said that they were still in talks with attorneys to see what policies can be instituted.
At Florida State in December 2006, athletes were given a week and a half to tidy up their Facebook profiles. A Baylor athletics director also sent an e-mail February 2006 reminding athletes of the importance of maintaining public image online, according to a March 2006 article in USA Today.
And officials at Louisiana State University threw two swimmers off the team after discovering they were members of a Facebook group that made "disparaging comments about swim coaches," according to the USA Today article.
Crime Check
At UTD, resources on the Web have helped the police get more information more quickly.
In the case of stolen property, officers used to check pawn shops and enter serial numbers into a national database. While officers still take those steps, websites such as ebay.com and craigslist.com are also checked.
In January, UTD police recovered six stolen instruments and returned them to students after one of the victims discovered her clarinet for sale online.
Like the Office of Student Life, the police also get referrals on inappropriate activity based on information a student has posted on Facebook.
"Sometimes we'll get a referral on a party, and we'll say, 'How do you know that?' and they'll say, 'It's advertised on Facebook," said Capt. Billy Talkington. "It's not against the rules to have a party, and we're not here to take away anybody's fun, but it's just good for us to have that information."
In another example, Talkington said if they get a reference to a student using drugs, officers can look at that student's Facebook account and sometimes see references to drug use.
"So, sometimes we use it as a corroborative tool to see what's out there," Talkington said. However, he added, officers do not typically use social networking sites unless they are referred to specific cases. Rather, they use public information databases for most of their work on the Internet.
When electrical engineering sophomore Syed Maaz Shah was arrested by the FBI on federal firearms charges in December, several media outlets covered the incident because the case was related to a terrorism investigation.
Pictures of the arrest cropped up almost immediately on a blog by a UTD student, and media outlets reported on online postings penned by Shah that seemed to support the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Talkington echoed Gage's concerns about use of the Internet for illegal or predatory activity.
"Like anything else, there's more information out there than there ever has been before," Talkington said. "The bad guys know it and the good guys know it too. Unfortunately, the bad guys use it for the wrong reasons."
Protect Yourself
Doty suggests students clean up their profiles to take down incriminating photos and suggestive statements, particularly if they are near graduation or searching for a job.
Even if students' profiles are clean, a posting on their wall or the profile of a networked friend could reflect badly on them. Some Facebook groups, meant to be humorous, have names that border on the lewd and suggestive.
For example, when asked whether belonging to a group for fans of the TV show "Sex and the City" would be considered inappropriate, Doty advised students to err on the side of caution.
Even a picture of a student in a swimsuit, Doty said, can be considered unprofessional.
Facebook profiles that prominently display contact information and home addresses also can put students in danger of predators.
Scott recommended students set high privacy settings on their profiles for social networking sites, so that their information is not visible to everyone. She added that students need to be much more cautious with what pictures they post or pose for.
"It may get to the point where everybody's got something incriminating and embarrassing out on the Internet. But we're not there yet," Scott said. "The Internet is an incredibly powerful tool and what we want is college students to use it to their advantage, and not their disadvantage."
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