Home | Forward | More Advice | Subscribe (Free) October 18, 2007
With Fran Northcutt, Honors Adviser, Hunter College of the City University of New York
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of the Week
Saying Goodbye
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Meet Your New Facebook Buddy: Great-Aunt Susan
HEAD Start
Did you ever go camping with your friends - no adults around to chaperone? Did you stay up all night pigging out on marshmallows? Tell scary and/or dirty stories? Go skinny-dipping? Didn't it feel great to be alone, away from the world, doing whatever you felt like, saying whatever you felt like?

But what if you weren't really "away" from the world? You would probably act a little bit differently. Well, this is the kind of false security you might feel about Facebook. After all, it was designed as a community for college students, right?

Face it: anyone can get on Facebook. Your Great-Aunt Susan who teaches chemistry at Penn. Your Dean of Students. Your mom! Still want to post that story about skinny-dipping?

HEAD Lines
So what are your university administrators doing on Facebook?
And why would they care what you post?
  		• Some of them want to connect. Let you know about a new scholarship. Invite you to a lecture by a visiting superstar in your field. Maybe just get you to see them as someone you can go to with a question or problem. They've figured out that putting a flyer on a kiosk may not be the best way to get your attention. So they go where they know they'll find you!

  		• And then there's the serious side. You could call it "discipline." Or you could call it "duty of care." Since they have the ability to check on what you're up to, some university administrators feel that they have to. And if they see that you're up to something you shouldn't be, they have to take action.

    Am I telling you this to spoil your fun? Only a little bit. You can still be crazy, funny, quirky, unique. Just don't be naked or drunk on Facebook.


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    From Other HEADS
    I ONCE HAD A CRUSH ON A GIRL in my class. One night a group of us were working on our problem sets, and one of the guys wrote something I can't repeat here, on my homework.  It was about the girl and what we would do together. I forgot to erase it before I turned in my homework: When I got it back, the TA had written something like,"So,how did it go?"

    --S.P.
    DHAKA, BANGLADESH
    STANFORD UNIVERSITY

    CALL YOUR PARENTS EVERY SINGLE WEEK, but you don't have to tell them everything. I call my mother on Sundays and talk to her for an hour and I'll catch her up with the things she will not be judgmental about. And the other stuff, I just don't tell her anymore. Pick and choose what you tell your parents.

    --CATE
    BROWN UNIVERSITY, JUNIOR

    Web Sites
    The folks at Cornell University had so much to say about Facebook, they made this website. It's worth checking out, and not just for the X-rated cautionary tale in the third paragraph...
    http://www.cit.cornell.edu/policy/memos/facebook.html

    HoH Tip
    A picture is worth a thousand words. Don't post a photo if you wouldn't want your parents, your professors, and your future employers to see it. And don't count on being able to take the picture down someday when you're ready to reinvent your image. Once you put a picture out there, it's out there for people to download and save for posterity.
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