Dont try this at home

Big Brother is watching you on facebook

By: James Samons and Ryan King

Posted: 11/9/05

Facebook lately has been used for a lot more than "connecting people through social networks," which is the description provided on the site. Lately evidence gathered from Facebook has been used in several cases involving Judicial Affairs.

This use of Facebook - a website (www.facebook.com) which allows university students to create profiles, add people as friends and post pictures - has surprised many of its Southeast users.

"I'm very concerned about that," said Andrea McCleland about Judicial Affair's use of Facebook. "If I put stuff on there, I know it's going to be seen by other people, but I don't want it to be used against me."

Trae Mitten, head of Judicial Affairs, assures students that he has no problems with his taking part in this activity.

"Primarily [Facebook] is used as an investigative tool," Mitten said. "It's a convenient way for us to see student information; a part that we use a lot are the pictures.

"There's nothing on Facebook that we haven't always had," Mitten said. "I've got everybody's ID picture that I can go access and look at, but it's more difficult to search for the university ID versus just type in something. [Facebook] is so much more convenient."

In a statement from Facebook, spokesperson Chris Hughes said: "This type of thing happens occasionally at schools throughout the network. Faculty and/or administrators are able to consider Facebook a forum of expression for their students, and they are legally able to regulate their behavior or use that information to make decisions. We're not saying that we by any means support this type of use of the network, but it is within their legal rights to do it."

Facebook is normally just used in situations where a student or faculty member has come to Judicial Affairs with a complaint; Judicial Affairs isn't out to get anyone and doesn't spend its time going through Facebook looking for violations, according to Mitten.

"It depends on what the situation is," Mitten said. "We have some situations where a [Community Adviser] would call and say 'Look at Justin's Facebook page - that picture is him in his room with alcohol.' So I guess in that instance where I go to his page and print it out, then I'm using [Facebook] to gather evidence at that point; I'm printing out that page that has evidence of the violation that's alleged.

"If you're talking about the sense that there's this rumor going around that myself and my staff sit around trolling Facebook for pictures, no, we don't use it that way. We use it to gather evidence in situations where someone has come to us with a complaint."

There is a question of why university officials are using Facebook as a source for evidence, since Facebook is independent of the university.

"It's a public website, and anything that's posted there is done so with no expectation of privacy, unless it's made private by the person creating it," said Mitten. "I don't have some sort of secret administrator passcodes that Facebook gave me; I've got the same authorization as anybody else on Facebook. If I'm able to see it it's because people let me see it. I guess that's how I view it."

Students concerned with others viewing their profiles can always block whomever they don't want to view it - including Mitten and his two graduate assistants.

The number of cases handled so far is nothing to worry about, though, according to Mitten.

"We have handled no more than 10 cases involving Facebook," he said. "It's a tiny, tiny amount."

Be sure to read The Arrow next week for what the Department of Public Safety thinks about this issue ... part two of the university and Facebook.