College officials ponder effects of FaceBook, MySpace
By Matt Krupnick
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
College administrators are figuring out just how essential Facebook and MySpace are for the proper care and feeding of students.
Hundreds of student-affairs officials from campuses around California arrived at UC Berkeley on Monday for pointers on the increasingly difficult task of keeping up with students' Internet savvy. Monday's sessions focused on the ever-increasing use of social-networking sites, such as the popular MySpace and Facebook sites.
"We are clearly entering a new realm where the development of technology is outpacing our ability to keep up with it," Genaro Padilla, UC Berkeley's vice chancellor for student affairs, told the gathered administrators. "It marks a real turning point for the way social networks operate."
MySpace -- recently bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. -- has attracted millions of users of all ages, bringing together people who share interests and friends online. Anyone is allowed to create a MySpace account, which has created concerns for parents and privacy groups.
Facebook, meanwhile, has cornered the college market and is rapidly expanding its use among high-school students. Users must have a valid academic e-mail account to join, and most online interactions are limited to a single school campus.
Use of the site, founded in 2004 by then-Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg, has boomed on many campuses. At UC Berkeley, former student-body President Misha Leybovich joked about Chancellor Robert Birgeneau's Facebook profile during Birgeneau's inauguration last April.
Two-thirds of Facebook's 7 million members use the site at least once a day, Zuckerberg told attendees Monday. Despite the heavy use, he said, nothing has really changed from the days before Facebook.
"The social norms on the site are matched precisely with those of the real world," said Zuckerberg, 21, who dropped out of school in 2004 to concentrate on his growing company. "People are doing online exactly what they do off-line. The only reason they're doing it online is because it's more efficient."
Much of Monday's discussions focused on the administrators' roles in the increasingly digital world of social networking. Several questions centered on how student-affairs officials should react when students post online photos of underage drinking and other illegal activities.
Opinions varied from "Smart students wouldn't post photos of illegal acts" to "Administrators have no business punishing students for such postings."
"If the administration feels like a police force, students are going to treat it like a police force," said Tony Wang, a Stanford University undergraduate. "If administrators go on there and collect information for enforcement, it's going to take away a lot of the positive effects Facebook has had."
But some students said they know colleagues can get carried away with online communities.
"I know a student who actually swore off MySpace for Lent," said Bonnie Sugiyama, a Cal State Sacramento graduate student who is researching MySpace use. "If you didn't know it was serious before, you know it's serious now."
UC Berkeley officials said they organized Monday's conference to prompt a long-overdue discussion on online social networks.
"For us, it's yet another medium," said Karen Warren, a student-affairs program coordinator at the Berkeley campus. "But because students are so far ahead of us, we have a lot of catching up to do."
"If we don't," added student-development director Jerlena Griffin-Desta, "we're missing a whole shift in the culture."
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
College administrators are figuring out just how essential Facebook and MySpace are for the proper care and feeding of students.
Hundreds of student-affairs officials from campuses around California arrived at UC Berkeley on Monday for pointers on the increasingly difficult task of keeping up with students' Internet savvy. Monday's sessions focused on the ever-increasing use of social-networking sites, such as the popular MySpace and Facebook sites.
"We are clearly entering a new realm where the development of technology is outpacing our ability to keep up with it," Genaro Padilla, UC Berkeley's vice chancellor for student affairs, told the gathered administrators. "It marks a real turning point for the way social networks operate."
MySpace -- recently bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. -- has attracted millions of users of all ages, bringing together people who share interests and friends online. Anyone is allowed to create a MySpace account, which has created concerns for parents and privacy groups.
Facebook, meanwhile, has cornered the college market and is rapidly expanding its use among high-school students. Users must have a valid academic e-mail account to join, and most online interactions are limited to a single school campus.
Use of the site, founded in 2004 by then-Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg, has boomed on many campuses. At UC Berkeley, former student-body President Misha Leybovich joked about Chancellor Robert Birgeneau's Facebook profile during Birgeneau's inauguration last April.
Two-thirds of Facebook's 7 million members use the site at least once a day, Zuckerberg told attendees Monday. Despite the heavy use, he said, nothing has really changed from the days before Facebook.
"The social norms on the site are matched precisely with those of the real world," said Zuckerberg, 21, who dropped out of school in 2004 to concentrate on his growing company. "People are doing online exactly what they do off-line. The only reason they're doing it online is because it's more efficient."
Much of Monday's discussions focused on the administrators' roles in the increasingly digital world of social networking. Several questions centered on how student-affairs officials should react when students post online photos of underage drinking and other illegal activities.
Opinions varied from "Smart students wouldn't post photos of illegal acts" to "Administrators have no business punishing students for such postings."
"If the administration feels like a police force, students are going to treat it like a police force," said Tony Wang, a Stanford University undergraduate. "If administrators go on there and collect information for enforcement, it's going to take away a lot of the positive effects Facebook has had."
But some students said they know colleagues can get carried away with online communities.
"I know a student who actually swore off MySpace for Lent," said Bonnie Sugiyama, a Cal State Sacramento graduate student who is researching MySpace use. "If you didn't know it was serious before, you know it's serious now."
UC Berkeley officials said they organized Monday's conference to prompt a long-overdue discussion on online social networks.
"For us, it's yet another medium," said Karen Warren, a student-affairs program coordinator at the Berkeley campus. "But because students are so far ahead of us, we have a lot of catching up to do."
"If we don't," added student-development director Jerlena Griffin-Desta, "we're missing a whole shift in the culture."
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