Kinda Creepy on Facebook
Cat in the Stack
Yesterday I finished posting a Facebook account, naming friends, hearing back from friends, writing quick notes to people I haven't talked to in years. It was lovely. Really lovely. None of the work stress of ordinary email. I may not be saying this a year from now, but, after one day in, I love my Facebook account. It was a fun day with pokes from old friends interspersed with various meetings during the day (I'm on research leave so I'm out of the meeting rhythm and Facebook kept the day light). But then I ran into the Facebook entry of a former student. She started it a few years ago, before she had any idea her profs would be on Facebook. I looked away as soon as I saw that it was written performatively with other student eyes in mind, not performatively for a prof. A Facebook friend came my way and offered me membership in a group ("Faculty Ethics on Facebook") designing ethical rules for profs now using Facebook. Ding. Yes, I'd read various articles about this before Facebook went post-student, and yes, there's a privacy function one can turn on, but suddenly I felt implicated in this new interloping world. I felt kinda creepy . . . And woke up this morning with a vivid memory of the time Freddie and Warren wanted their dad to come visit our treefort. Mr. R had a black moustache as fine and dark as India ink. He played jazz trumpet a few steps below the "famous" level, as a session musician, third trumpet in a touring band with a notably strong brass section. He'd played with Miles. All that. Freddie and Warren didn't see their dad that often. But a parent in our fort? As with everything in our democracy of three, we voted on this issue. We never knew how our votes would end up but we always abided by them. We were about five years apart in age, Warren the oldest, me the youngest, and sometimes the vote split by age (little kids against big one), gender, family, or other preferences. The vote was 2 to 1 against allowing a grown up into the fort. I think Freddie and Warren must have assumed I'd vote in favor (they teased me a lot about my crush on their dad) so one of them must have filed the negative assuming I would take the fall. There was a long silence when it turned out that two negative votes had been cast. Our votes were absolutely, sacredly secret so I don't know which son voted to keep out his dad, to preserve our treefort as a parent-free space. I enjoy being in Facebook now, but it makes me mad that the students on Facebook weren't given the chance to vote on whether their space should be kept grownup free.
[Image is courtesy of Flickr, with thanks for the Creative Commons licensing to Lori http://www.flickr.com/photos/scenes_and_thoughts_and_things_from_the_lif...
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Thanks for an interesting post, Cathy. I'm one of your colleagues at Duke, in the Religion Dept, though we have never met, and I occasionally comment on your blog in mine.
I'm interested by your Facebook experience, and I have had a similar one, and that odd feeling of being somewhere and seeing something I shouldn't have. I am curious about the ethical guidelines for profs. on Facebook -- that's something I'd like to see.
Best wishes,
Mark
Proposed guidelines include:
1. Keeping official course activities in other online tools.
2. Never requiring students to participate in Facebook or having Facebook influence a course grade. An exception is for social research projects that use Facebook and make their connection to a course explicit.
3. Not friending students unless they request the connection.
4. Accepting friend requests from all students (unless the instructor makes the decision not to friend students at all).
5. Not looking at student profiles unless the faculty member has been friended by the student and even then using Facebook information judiciously and for educational purposes.
6. Faculty members should avoid association with groups with sexual content or political views that might offend certain students or compromise the student to teacher relationship.
7. Taking extreme care with privacy settings and faculty profile content to limit profiles to information relevant to educational purposes. A broad variety of information may be appropriate, however, given the area of expertise / subject, the local customs of an instructor's school, and the dynamics of his or her classroom. Content should be placed thoughtfully and periodically reconsidered to maintain this educational standard.
8. Exercising appropriate discretion when using Facebook for personal communications (with friends, colleagues, other students, etc.) with the knowledge that faculty behavior on Facebook may be used as a model by our students.
One good thing is that Facebook allows for a privacy feature. So, students can block or show limited profiles.
As a grad student, I think Facebook can be tricky. We are in between worlds, so to speak. Though Facebook, we can learn about the latest happenings such as cool conferences and meet other like-minded profs who can give us insight into our research area that the profs at our own colleges may not have. Thus, grad students are able to glean a bigger picture of a particular field by conversing with profs at other universities. Plus, we are able to share ideas for mulitdisiplinary research. Whereas, at f2f university doctoral programs it seems the scope is to specialize, specialize, specialize into narrow ideologies. Hence, I wonder if such platforms as Facebook can help scholars maintain interdisiplinary connections.
My field is education. Interestingly, I haven't found one prof of education from my university on Facebook. Most profs of education are a bit pedantic. I found out early when I switched majors into education, that free-thinking in education is quite an anomaly. Indeed, for the most part the "establishment" is embraced in colleges of education in the US.
On the other hand, I have found some technology profs who I have met through conferences and while studying abroad are on Facebook. It is a good way to keep in touch. Computer scientists and tech gurus tend to be much more open minded than than education profs. To me, seeing that there are some profs on Facebook who are mavericks really inspires me and reminds me that even though most of my f2f education profs are dull, there are some profs that are doing some really exciting work...outside colleges of education.
Mechelle
http://lpcesc07.ning.com/
The odd thing about treehouses and Facebook is that people grow up ... to be their parents. The Facebook cohort is rapidly aging. In many instances they are the grownups that they once kept out, and they are becoming the teachers who live their lives within the Facebook narrative conventions.
The site grew up because it was growing up, and you were invited in.
- Tyler
Hi, Tyler, I guess I don't like the determinism of thinking people grow up to be their parents. My fear/hope/prediction is that young people will build a new treefort with rules that keep out the grownups. Personally, I hope they do. It makes me sad how much we police kids. The site grew up, which means that kids will move on to someplace where they won't have to wear their "school clothes" all the time. That's my guess. In the meantime, I'm loving meeting my old pals on Facebook. Who knows, Freddie and Warren may even show up.
That's a very helpful set of guidelines, Cathy. Thanks very much for posting them.
The culture at my school seems to welcome professors into Facebook. Students communicate with me there pretty regularly, inviting me to campus events, writing on my wall when they see we share musical tastes, and so forth. I occasionally cringe at some of the stuff on their profiles, but I figure it's their business, not mine. I'm not sure what I'd do if I thought someone was exhibiting threatening behavior. That's a tough call. Given the extremely social and, for college students, localized presence of Facebook, I imagine the community would be alarmed pretty quickly.
My biggest Facebook complaint came today, when I was offered friendship by someone I'd never met who was trying to establish a business contact with me. I found that behavior out-of-bounds. Interesting.