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July 27, 2007, 02:08 PM ET
The Facebook Fuzz
Some students at the University of Oxford are hopping mad about the institution’s policy of policing Facebook for evidence of “trashings” — annual post-exam rituals in which classmates cover each other in foam, eggs, and flour.
Evidently, trashings violate campus rules. So when students post photos of their revelry on Facebook — as they inevitably do — Oxford officials surf the site and dole out fines, by e-mail, to people they can identify.
It’s hardly surprising that this type of law enforcement would tick off students. But Martin McCluskey, president of the university’s Students Union, makes an interesting point in an interview with the Associated Press: “Disciplinary procedures are supposed to be transparent,” he argues.
That complaint seems a bit different from the typical I-was-caught-on-Facebook sour grapes, and it raises a question: Do colleges owe it to their students to spell out their policies on how they will, or won’t, use Facebook as an investigatory tool? —Brock Read
Categories: Student-Life, Leadership
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