Whether We Like it or Not

I recently created a Facebook page, more on a whim than for any real reason, and I have been amazed at how this site has made it possible for me to interact with and follow the lives of others who I otherwise wouldn’t really talk to very much. The fact that personal sites are blocked to anyone you don’t “friend” is a bonus and has made me feel comfortable posting information about myself on the web.

Of course, part of the fun of using Facebook is looking up past friends, to see where people are living, what they are doing, etc. Another fun/interesting/educational part of the site is that there are many different groups you can join, pages that bring people together with similar interests. As you can imagine, there are groups for just about every possible interest and topic.

Recently, after trying to look up some people from my past, I searched the Facebook site for “Waynflete”, just to see what results would return. To my surprise, there were hundreds of results, some of them student pages (blocked to the general public), but many of them were group pages, created by students and alumni, open to the public for anyone searching Facebook to view.

Being the curious person that I am, I looked at many of these open group sites and was mostly shocked at what I saw. While sometimes funny and harmless, much of what students have posted on these sites is offensive, personal, disrespectful, hurtful, even hateful. There is information about alumni, current students, even many of us who work here, posted on these pages for anyone who searches “Waynflete” to view. I post this blog with hesitation, since I don’t recommend that everyone look at these sites, as some of the content is pretty shocking. But it is real, it is out there, and it has me left me seriously confused.

And so this is why I write. The question I am now wrestling with is “If we strive to be good teachers, where does that responsibility end”? Must I now confront students with what I know? To the students who have posted offensive material, should I say something? Should I contact alumni? Is this a “teachable” moment? Is it 50 or 100 teachable moments (depending on your value system and what you consider offensive, I guess)? Does my role and responsibility as teacher/advisor now extend now into cyberspace? Should I never have looked at these pages in the first place? I feel like I know what the right thing to do is. Acting on it just seems so overwhelming.

I have to think that students aren’t expecting adults/teachers/the general public to look through these sites. They must assume that what they write on these sites is private, even though the posts can be seen by anyone on the planet with a computer and internet connection. Otherwise, I can’t believe they would communicate like this public. Would they?

What do you think?