Last semester, I began teaching a new workshop in Emory’s library called “Facebook, Privacy, and Online Identity.” The goal of the workshop was to help students become aware of how much they share on Facebook and to help them make conscious decisions about what they would share. I know that students, as well as almost everyone on the planet, have become more aware of The Social Network’s privacy issues due their policy changes in late 2009 and early 2010, as well as the media coverage that these changes drew. For this reason, I expected that the workshops would draw a large number of students. I was wrong. Over a total of four workshops, I had a total of four students come through.
I’m working on doing better marketing for this semester’s workshops, but I was pleased to see that all four of the students who attended the workshops were flabbergasted at how much information they had been allowing others to see about them. Each of them believed that they had locked their profiles down to make it impossible for a stranger to see anything about them. By the end of the workshop they had modified their privacy settings to produce the results they wanted, and we had covered concepts such as who’s in a “network” and what a “friend of a friend” is, two topics the students, it became apparent, didn’t really understand.
Here at ProfHacker, Julie has written previously about managing Facebook privacy settings (round one and round two). On a related topic, don’t miss Mark’s recent post about archiving your Facebook data.) Unfortunately, Facebook changes its interface on a semi-regular basis, so I thought it might prove useful to share the six steps I walk students through to help them check the various places where Facebook has tucked its different privacy settings. And yes, you read that correctly: there are six different steps for locking down your Facebook privacy settings.
Steps 1-5
You’ll find the first five steps under “Privacy Settings” in the upper right corner’s “Account” menu.
Here are the first five places where we’ll be locking down settings.
Step 1: “Connecting on Facebook” settings
On this screen, you can choose who can find your account when searcing on Facebook, who can send you friend requests, and more. You might, for example, consider whether or not you want those who you have not friended being able to see your friend list. Clicking on the “Preview My Profile” button allows you to see what your Facebook profile page looks like to general Facebook user whom you haven’t friened or how it looks to particular friends. After you’ve got these settings as you’d like them and checked them in the preview, click “Back to Privacy” to return to the previous menu.
Where Steps 2, 3, and 4 live
Facebook provides users with several different presets under the “Sharing on Facebook” menu under “Privacy settings”: Everyone, Friends of Friends, Friends Only, and Recommended. These all work, of course, but choosing to “customize settings” will give you the most control and is where we’ll tackle steps 2, 3, and 4.
Step 2: Sharing on Facebook > Customize Settings
There are many different options for setting privacy under this “Customize settings” menu—many more than this image shows. Go through each of the options and choose what details about yourself you would like others to see. Again, you have the opportunity to preview how your choices affect how others see your profile.
Step 3: Edit Album Privacy
On the same screen as Step 2, you’ll want to click on “Edit album privacy” for Step 3. That’s right: Facebook has buried a privacy setting within another privacy setting.
Once you’ve clicked on “Edit album privacy,” you’ll be able to set permissions on each of your photo albums. It’s worth noting that I only have one photo album; if I had more, I’d be able to set permissions for each album individually.
Step 4: Editing “Places” Settings
After finishing with your photo privacy settings, go back to the “customize settings” screen (from Step 2). Scroll down further to edit who can “check you into Places.” Yes, Step 4 is another buried setting.
Clicking on the “Edit Settings” for Places generates a pop-up window, in which you can choose to enable or disable the ability of your friends to check you into Places on Facebook. (Just imagine the horror if someone were to check you into a Monster Truck Rally without your consent.)
Step 5: Apps and Websites
Now that you’ve finished steps 2-4, go back to the main Privacy Settings menu. Even though “Apps and Websites” is on this menu, its title and description might not lead you to think that it would have privacy settings. It does, and that’s where Step 5 is.
On this page, you can choose which apps can access your account, determine who can see your recent games and app activity, control instant personalization, and–perhaps most important for tailoring your web presence—decide whether or not your Facebook profile will show up in the results of something like Google.
Step 6: Facebook ads
Unfortunately, not all of Facebook’s privacy settings actually live under the Privacy Settings menu. For Step 6, you need to choose “Account Settings” under the upper right corner’s “Account” menu.
Under the “Account Settings” menu, you should choose the last tab, “Facebook ads.” There are two settings to consider here, including one that governs what might be a future option for Facebook (!?).
Wrapping Up
So that’s it. With these six steps you’ve had a chance to consider what information you want to be accessible to others on Facebook. As you might be able to tell from looking at the above images, I’ve chosen to make my Facebook activities very private. But that’s just me. What’s your preferred setting for your Facebook privacy? Do you use the platform for personal or professional relationships?
Finally, I’m more than willing to admit that I don’t know everything about Facebook, so there’s every chance in the world that I might have missed a privacy setting. If you know of another setting to tweak, please let us know in the comments!
[Lead image by Flickr user opensourceway / Creative Commons licensed]
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62 Responses to Six Steps for Checking Your Facebook Privacy
reinway - February 7, 2011 at 8:54 am
Very useful, thank you! To this I would add: while Facebook asks if you are faculty or student when you sign up for a university network, it does not seem to differentiate in terms of privacy. If you join a university network, you add your students. You’ll need to double-check all your settings if you wish to make your page private (again).
briancroxall - February 7, 2011 at 9:08 am
Thanks for pointing this out, reinway. As I mention above, I’ve found that many people don’t understand exactly how networks work or the fact that you can remain in one even after you’ve left the school. This is one of the easiest ways that people can come across your profile when you might think that you’ve limited it to only people at your school.
fiver - February 7, 2011 at 12:44 pm
These are all great tips and I too have already made myself very private on Facebook. The only other thing I would suggest you show to students (or others) has to do with updating statuses. You can choose who gets to see each of your posts. I have a “professional” group I’ve made where I ask questions about sources, courses, and writing. I also have a second group that consists of family and friends where I share links to photos or stories about what I do on the weekend.
briancroxall - February 7, 2011 at 1:23 pm
Excellent idea, fiver. Julie previously covered using groups in Facebook, but using them with status updates is not something that I knew you could do. (Full disclosure, Facebook is something that I use as a venue for my tweets and not much else.)
e_eddie_edwards - February 7, 2011 at 4:42 pm
My preferred setting for Facebook privacy was to discontinue my account last December.
I was a member for a couple of years. I connected with some old friends, cousins, aunts and uncles. My “friends” included some people from work, and, I made a couple of new friends.
Around the time of the release of the movie, I found the experience had grown old. If everybody’s doing it, what’s the point? I felt it was time to limit the BS in my life. So I shut it down and went back to genuine human contact networking.
From where I sit, I find that face-2-face beats face-2-monitor every time.
donnabird - February 7, 2011 at 4:55 pm
That was very useful and enlightening!!! Thanks!
laur2582 - February 8, 2011 at 8:00 am
One thing that I have done is to create groups of my Facebook “friends” so that I can easily customize my privacy settings by group. For example, I have one called “limited profile,” one called “blocked from status” (for certain colleagues and family members), and one called “excluded from photos” for people I don’t know well, so they don’t see photos of my child or house. This enables me to customize by group, rather than individually. I have the most baroque privacy settings, perhaps, but I am fairly confident that no one sees what I don’t want them to see.
22228715 - February 8, 2011 at 8:10 am
I’m still adjusting settings. I went through and made about 10 different friend groups (trying to even differentiate between h.s. friends and just people I sort of know from h.s.) and then set privacy settings for each group. What I found is that when I made it more complicated (nested if-then privacy settings), I can’t always predict what they will see or not see. The ‘view from their perspective’ button is nice, but for some reason doesn’t always show what I expect it to.
Remember that if you prevent a person or group from being able to post on your wall, that becomes obvious to them when they go to contact you. They will need to send you a message (assuming you have that setting enabled.) The trick around it is that they can tag you in a photo, which then allows them to post on that wall.
You might want to also take a look at ways to entirely block individuals or groups. You can block them entirely through the privacy setting, and all they will see is the silhouette and name. Or, you can create a friend group and try to set it with the most minimal settings it will allow you to set. This still shows them personal info (likes and dislikes, etc.) but will give very casual acquaintances or potential actual friends limited interactivity and yet shields things like photos from decades ago, info about children, or your status updates.
briancroxall - February 8, 2011 at 8:48 am
Thanks, everyone, for your ideas about how you use groups to help manage privacy. I’ve broken my friends into groups based on where in my life I’ve known them, but perhaps I’ll start rethinking if I’d rather have more fine-grained settings.
ivanacg - February 8, 2011 at 10:11 am
Thank you for the guide. It is interesting to see how the settings work and I appreciated reading different people’s comments. Fb helps me keep in touch with friends and friendlies. I don’t have much time to fine-tune the settings so I instead moderate myself. Whenever I want to post something I imagine myself entering an empty hall (with lots of nooks and hidden places) and wonder whether — without really knowing who can hear me — I would shout out loud what I am about to say.
lburgee - February 8, 2011 at 2:21 pm
Well done. This topic is of great interest to me and I just don’t understand why students (and others) would want to post things on Facebook that could (as a result of lax privacy) result in embarrassment, shame, and possibly loss of a job, or result in a “non-job” offer (by an employer to be). I teach our students about “The Darker Side of Facebook” and share some “Things you should NOT do or post” on my webpage at http://www.burgee.com/facebook . The webpage has a seven-minute video of a recent news appearance where I share some first-hand experiences regarding this topic. It is also on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXmFtCWKRR8 . I wish all students would clean up their Facebook pages prior to job hunting! Please show this to your students.
Ciocccholly - September 22, 2011 at 1:23 pm
In 2011, is there really a
University of Wisconsin administrative position called “Vice Provost for
Diversity and Climate?”
If so, the recent behavior of its current occupant, Damon
Williams (as described by Peter Wood), should be fully investigated.
If Williams is found guilty of inciting
such thuggish and adolescent BAMN-style behavior, he should be summarily
dismissed and his office disbanded as being hostile to maintaining an academic climate.
chuckkle - September 22, 2011 at 5:56 pm
Of course this is Wood’s editorialized opinion piece. It slides between fact and biased interpretation.
1. Although there was a debate format presentation on campus later that day, Wood provides no substantive discussion of the critique offered there of the CEO reports. While Wood says he’s talked to the CEO supporters, he doesn’t seem to have any interest in the substantive rebuttal by Prof. Church and others.
2. While spinning his interpretation of the events as a “mob,” Wood does allow that others present saw it differently. The police present didn’t see the need to arrest anyone, not has the state’s attorney seen any need to begin any prosecution. Given decades of experience in handling football crowds and swarms of drunken students when the bars on State Street close on weekend nights, Madison officials do have a good idea of how to handle these situations. They don’t seem as anxious as Peter Wood watching the O’Reilly show.
3. Wood practices his own slippery style most obviously in the paragraph on Williams at the press conference. ”Perhaps in classic “community organizer” fashion, Williams set them in motion …” This can be read two ways: (a.) perhaps resembling a community organizer or (b) perhaps Williams instigated them. If we read it as the latter, maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. If we read the former, Wood is asserting that Williams did indeed instigate the crowd to enter the room (although the doors and clearly open at this point for people to exit and enter, and the conference is formally ended). The basis for this more sinister interpretation is that by showing a clenched raised fist he was signaling the crowd: “[Williams] emerges from the room pumping his fist in what looks like a “go get ‘em” signal to the protesters.” In Woods fevered imagination a rather common gesture (arm raised, clenched fist) is not read in its usual way as an affirmation of power and solidarity. (See, for example, among many examples the iconic image of US African American athletes on the winner’s podium at the Mexico City Olympic Games, or news images from the Arab Spring, or the Iran protests, etc.) Rather, Wood reads it as a secret code that will begin some nefarious action.
Wood’s version is a biased interpretation, which is fine for an editorial comment. But it twists and omits along the way to end up with unproven and unsubstantiated claims: that the Vice Provost and Dean abused their authority, or that the students need to be disciplined. And, “flash mobs organized to intimidate critics, or university officials purveying falsehoods to whip students into taking illegal actions.” Claimed, yes; demonstrated, sorry, no cigar.
Chuck Kleinhans
Ciocccholly - September 22, 2011 at 6:18 pm
Chuck made me chuckle when he opined that “If Wood says he’s talked to the CEO supporters, he doesn’t seem to have any interest in the substantive rebuttal by Prof. Church and others.”
Do share that substantive rebuttal with us. We can hardly wait.
Is it full of the usual racial double standards defense or insinuations that the State/Territory of Wisconsin aided and abetted slavery 150 years ago, or does it simply trot out the tendentious blather of BAMN’s ruses that rely on ethnic or racial identity groupthink?
C’mon Chuck….give us another chuckle.
badger74 - September 22, 2011 at 7:00 pm
So, this is where the Tea Party faction hides on the COHE. In a quiet right-wing hole where nobody goes much. BTW Steve Nass has NEVER had any real interest in the UW except to use it to stay in the headlines. He is a moron.
frankschmidt - September 22, 2011 at 7:59 pm
Mr. Wood neglects the fact that land-grant universities were explicitly founded to educate the less-privileged sons and daughters of the state, for the benefit of the common good. In other words, they were founded as affirmative action institutions for students who couldn’t go to established colleges in the East. Why should Wisconsin, or any other institution, abandon that tradition? Admission to land-grant institutions has never been based solely on “merit,” nor should it.
tjfarrel - September 23, 2011 at 6:37 am
There is also the overly familiar “community organizer” label as applied to President Obama by his political opponents: a clear suggestion that a) somehow or other this is all Mr. Obama’s fault and b) that Mr Obama is himself a poster child of all that is wrong with affirmative action.
I get that this is an opinion pice; I know how blogs work. The invocation of “community organizer” is still pretty slimy even by those standards.
minnesotan - September 23, 2011 at 6:55 am
Lovely tactic to present a false dilemma: if merit is not the basis of admissions policy, then it must be race, right?!
silencenolonger - September 23, 2011 at 7:50 am
What is disturbing here is the lack of transparency by the University. If they believe diversity is important, they should stand by their moral position. It is this underhandedness that bothers people.
Kids brought up in poor neighborhoods, have poorer schools and more social problems. They should be given a break. Then say it, instead they treat it like it is in bad social taste to even want to discuss this. Do they really believe this country is a meritocracy? Universities need to grow a spine and stand by their beliefs..
dank48 - September 23, 2011 at 8:31 am
. . . where he open the front doors from inside.
megginson - September 23, 2011 at 9:10 am
This misses the point that defenders of admissions policies such as those of UW have been trying to make: This is NOT a moral position (even if plenty of people do believe that there are historical wrongs that still echo). It is a well researched position taken on the basis of the value of diversity for the entire student body of the campus. Folks who don’t know about that research can find it, and plenty of references to it, in the work of Patricia Gurin and others that led to a mildly conservative Supreme Court coming down on the side of the principles of the University of Michigan’s admissions policies (yeah, 5-4, but the Constitution says that counts as a win, and U-M did have to clean up the shortcuts they were taking in their application of their policies, but the principle stood up). I have not yet heard any serious public arguments about that *educational* position other than “I don’t believe it; let’s talk about reverse discrimination instead.” That is clearly the position that CEO has taken.
marktropolis - September 23, 2011 at 10:03 am
Yeah, it’s all about the mobs. And the “community organizers” (equals dangerous, law-breaking, people of color). Here, Wood is just working the PR on behalf of CEO and NAS. No real interrogation of the content, since there’s an assumption that CEO and NAS are righteous in their work.
For those of you looking for a different version of the story (and a version that isn’t based entirely on second- or third-hand reports), see the series of posts over at Sara Goldrick-Rab’s blog: http://eduoptimists.blogspot.com/. Especially since most of Wood’s references come from individuals/organizations who are either sympathetic to CEO and NAS. Come on, he’s using O’Reilly’s show as a reference? Can you actually call that a news program with a straight face?
marktropolis - September 23, 2011 at 10:09 am
In 2011, did Texas really just execute a white supremacist? In 2011, do we still have people questioning a sitting president’s nationality because he’s white? In 2011…
Short version, yes, in 2011, there is still the need to have someone in every college or university who is paying attention to these issues. Unless of course you live in a world where racism doesn’t exist. In which case, I hope you’re enjoying the blue skies and white sandy beaches. It’s still raining over here in reality-world.
peterwwood - September 23, 2011 at 10:24 am
If megginson has “not yet heard any serious public arguments” responding to the substance of Patricia Gurin’s report or the writings of others who defend racial preferences on “educational” grounds, it is surely because megginson hasn’t looked very hard. The Gurin report was subject to close critique not long after its issue. See for example Thomas Wood and Malcolm Sherman’s Race and Higher Education (pp. 78-109 for the Gurin report) http://www.nas.org/polimage.cfm?doc_Id=89&size_code=Doc. Or Larry Purdy’s book, Getting Under the Skin of Diversity. I also dealt with the Gurin report and other such Arguments in my book Diversity: The Invention of a Concept.
As to the claim that “the principle stood up” under Supreme Court scrutiny in the 5-4 decision in Grutterr v. Bollinger, because the Constitution “counts that as a win,” I rather doubt that megginson regards all such narrow votes on the Supreme Court as vindications of principle. If the Supreme Court agrees to hear the currently pending Fisher case from Texas and uses it to overrule Grutter, would that too count as a vindication of “principle?”
There are clearly clashing principles at stake in this broader debate. On one side are those who argue that “diversity” is a Constitutionally valid pursuit that should subordinate individual rights and human equality. On the other side are those who argue that equality before the law should limit government use of racial classifications to egregious situations in which there is no other practical remedy and even then must be “narrowly tailored,” and that college and university pursuit of “diversity” does not pass that test of “strict scrutiny.”
“Diversity” came into the lexicon of higher education by means of Justice Powell’s side remarks in his 1978 opinion in The Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. No other Supreme Court justice endorsed his view, which was taken by many at the time as odd and self-contradictory. Powell inveighed against racial stereotypes but at the same time embraced them profoundly, supposing that the mere presence in a medical school lecture hall of people of different races would adduce the educational benefit of “representing” different points of view for everyone’s educational advantage, Black students would provide the service of representing “black” perspectives by their mere presence, etc.
It took American higher education six or seven years after the Bakke decision to work up much enthusiasm for this peculiar idea. And it took even longer for supporters to go looking for empirical evidence that “diversity” so construed has real “education” benefits. The poorly conceived and haphazardly executed Gurin report was hacked out by the University of Michigan in the run-up to the Grutter decision as a last ditch effort to give some semblance of substance to the claim that Diversity has educational benefits. It failed any meaningful test of good social science, but it did give Justice O’Connor the fig leaf she needed to elevate the pursuit of “diversity” in higher education to an official Supreme Court loop hole in the principle of equal protection of the laws.
Will this stand further judicial review? I doubt it–and so do many supporters of the diversity doctrine. That is one reason why people like Vice Provost Williams at the University of Wisconsin are resorting to such unseemly tactics.
Peter Wood
dobbsart - September 23, 2011 at 10:29 am
Steve Nass has for years been abusing his legislative authority to wage a vendetta on higher education in general and the University of Wisconsin in particular. So nothing, and no investigation, that he undertakes as regards this matter should be interpreted as anything other than what it surely is: a biased, sham-fisted frontal attack in the ongoing culture/intellect wars.
I say this completely irrespective of the numbers revealed by CEO’s studies, which, if they are indeed accurately obtained and interpreted, are shameful and damaging.
Also, FWIW, Lori Berquam has been at UW for years and is herself a relative sham. I’m truly shocked that she retains the position of Dean of Students after mishandling and mismanaging incident after incident for much of the past decade.
Barbara Piper - September 23, 2011 at 10:39 am
“It is a well researched position taken on the basis of the value of
diversity for the entire student body of the campus. Folks who don’t
know about that research can find it….”
Whatever the moral issues involved here, my reading of the literature on evaluating the effects of “diversity” in higher education is that the major benefits are to non-minority students, and they are pretty weak benefits at that. From this perspective, the ‘diversity’ push could be read as simply another effort to benefit majority students, not minority students. I was a bigger fan of traditional affirmative action policies that did not pretend that there were such wonderful benefits to everyone, but simply acknowledged that a group of people who had suffered hundreds of years of slavery and discrimination might deserve special consideration in hiring, college admissions, etc, without significantly lowering standards for access to such opportunities.
unusedusername - September 23, 2011 at 11:00 am
“It is a well researched position taken on the basis of the value of diversity for the entire student body of the campus.”
It looks like recent research shows that this is not the case, from today’s Chronicle:
“More Diversity on Campus Leads to Less Diversity Among Friends, Study Finds”
http://chronicle.com/article/More-Diversity-on-Campus-Leads/129110/
People like to interact with others like themselves. Bringing in more diversity just creates self-segregation.
badger74 - September 23, 2011 at 11:38 am
If you actually read the UW policy it states just that.
“Our application process is designed to help
us find these students. We don’t use formulas and there is no required minimum
test score, GPA, or class rank. We read each application thoroughly, one by one.
We focus first on academic
excellence—courses, grades, and test scores. Beyond academics, we look for
qualities such as leadership, concern for others and the community, and
achievement in the arts, athletics, and other areas. We’re also seeking
diversity in personal background and experience and your potential for
contribution to the Wisconsin community.”
badger74 - September 23, 2011 at 11:47 am
According to the most recent data (Fall 2011) from the UW, only 28.3% of Black students were admitted to the UW compared with 54.7% of Hispanics, 53.5% or so overall for Asians, and 56.8% for Whites. So whites and Asians are about twice as likely to be admitted to the UW.
http://apa.wisc.edu/Admissions/New_Freshmen_Applicants.pdf
marktropolis - September 23, 2011 at 11:58 am
There’s a difference between counting heads (which is what the study you cite does) and actually attempt to define learning outcomes, which what the research did in U. Michigan (and Shape of the River for that matter).
And yes, please tend to self-segregate in the sense of tending to stay around folks that they are comfortable around. Are you suggesting that we should let that be? Do we need to go back to Plessy v Ferguson?
marktropolis - September 23, 2011 at 12:37 pm
Wood, in your third paragraph you’re not only setting up a false dichotomy, you’re willfully misrepresenting what advocates of affirmative action have been saying for year.
And please, stop with the equality language. You and yours have spent the last 30 years trying to redefine that term in contradiction to reality. CEO, ACRI, CIR, all these organizations have taken the language of equal rights and civil rights and twisted them to meet your intentions. If you actually look at the body of work that CEO, ACRI, CIR and others have accrued over the years, the overwhelming evidence point to the aim to ensure white supremacy in education and employment. I’m sure you can cherry pick a case or two where the beneficiary is a person of color, but the overwhelming whiteness of their clientele tells the story.
They shall be known by their fruits. And the fruits of CEO, ACRI and CIR, show a predisposition towards ensuring white equality under the law, and not much else. So please quit the equality and civil rights mumbo jumbo – you’re just spinning the language to fit your un-equal, and your un-civil rights agenda..
cwm4c - September 23, 2011 at 1:00 pm
If Vice Provost Williams actually used his University account to send the alleged e-mail and/or tweet, he should be censured or fired. This should be very easy to check in under 2 minutes from the IT office.
cwm4c - September 23, 2011 at 1:05 pm
Chuck,
Since I accused you of:
“Chuck, it seems you cannot ever resist posting to Peter’s blog. Please do us all a favor and change your auto notification of peter’s postings to your own auto post of “I hate Peter.” That would be much shorter to post, achieve the same thing, and save the rest of us the trouble and time time of reading your anti-Peter babble.”
You vehemently denied it saying Peter often posts and you don’t respond. Since my post, Peter has written 3 articles and you’ve responded 3 times–all within the first 2 responses! I have nothing for/against Peter or you, but it seems for your health, you should restrain, restrain, restrain. Just try it once….
emwhitephd - September 23, 2011 at 1:12 pm
I read the intelligent Frankschmidt comment differently. The quote marks around “merit” seem intended to question the definition of the term as used by Wood and his defenders, a simple-minded one based on test scores. Minnesotan confirms that simple-mindedness in his comment. Merit is complex.
chuckkle - September 23, 2011 at 11:03 pm
Your statement needs clarification: you mean 28.3% of applicants?
chuckkle - September 23, 2011 at 11:35 pm
cwm4c: I did respond to your accusation with a factual statement:
“As far as constantly responding, you must have confused me with someone else. Since the beginning of July, Wood has written 11 essays, and I’ve only responded to 4 of them by my reckoning.” (Woods Sept 7 blog).
It’s your reading that this is “vehemently” denying. I did respond to his Sept 19 blog, a day after it was posted (see the date of the first two responses before I entered mine). Seems like restraint to me. It is pure speculation on your part that I have some kind of automatic alarm that alerts me to a Wood event (I don’t: visit me and look at my computer if you like). But of course it serves your purpose of smearing me by claiming that and repeating the claim although I already responded. Thus I can only take your statement that you “have nothing for/against Peter or you,” as either a flat out lie or coming from someone so disturbed they don’t know their own mind.
Clearly you are hoping that I will just not participate in the dialogue since I often raise uncomfortable matters for you. Well, airing of different views is basic to these CHE blogs, and to academic life in general. Get used to it.
The functional life of a blog posting and response seems to be about one day max. Occasionally the matter gets hashed out over a long stretch (for example the Wood climate warming discussion that went on for dozens of posts and several weeks…btw, I didn’t participate in that). Therefore a timely response is totally appropriate. Need more schooling? Respond off list.
Chuck Kleinhans
cadman70454 - September 25, 2011 at 10:29 am
I don’t need to look up “mob” in a dictionary to let me know what a mob is. Wisconson is full of democrat mobs, and this one was just one more democrat mob. Fire the administrative instigators then arrest them and pursue charges under RICO laws for conspiracy to instigate a riot. Then expel all the students who participated in activity other than law abiding activity.
To liberals who wish to participate in meetings or gatherings that they like to invade, I suggest you purchase a copy of “Robert’s Rules of Order” and study it and abide by it. If not, then you are participating in anarchy and your claims of free speech has nothing to do with the mob behavior.
dlr - September 25, 2011 at 11:27 am
You wrote… “The odds ratios of individuals with identical academic credentials being
admitted to undergraduate study at the University of Wisconsin were 576
to one if the applicant were black and 1,494 to one if the applicant
were Hispanic.”
But you didn’t provide the odds ratio for a white student, or an asian student. That is the key piece of information needed to describe the amount of prejudice being shown by the university. Exactly how much less likely is a white candidate or an asian candidate to be admitted than a black or hispanic with identical academic credentials.
It would also be interesting to find out what the ratio of men to women with identical credentials. I have heard that women are also being systematically discriminated against in university admissions. I have heard that women are being rejected routinely with credentials that gives a man an automatic admission. This is just wrong.
5ftflirt - September 25, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Since women now outnumber men on almost all campuses, I doubt that is true.
Ciocccholly - September 25, 2011 at 3:25 pm
The CEO Report demonstrating the rampant use of double standards in undergrad admissions at U of Wisconsin should surprise no one. Universities proudly defend such policies as necessary to their mission. It is a national disease.
The fraud and dishonesty of the “diversity” zealots are palpable when one reviews the huge disparities in time-to-degree and graduation numbers. The numbers of black and Hispanic students who drop out, disillusioned and bitter, are a bitter reminder of the real long term effects of such immoral and deceitful admissions practices trading under the anachronism that is “diversity.”
Barbara Piper - September 25, 2011 at 4:14 pm
No, that is precisely why it is true. The fear on many campuses, especially small private colleges, is that the percentage of women students will tip over 60%, the magic number at which the school will appear to be a ‘predominantly women’s college’. At that point, the wisdom goes, men will stop applying.
One way that many colleges have tried to hold this off is to apply lower admission standards to men, to keep the percentage of male students above 40%. It seems blatantly discriminatory, but that’s the logic of admissions….
chuckkle - September 25, 2011 at 5:43 pm
Ah yes, cadman and his little Peter Wood claque: can’t be bothered with facts such as (1) the press conference was OVER when the students entered the room, (2) press conferences do not use Robert’s Rules of Order. In fact, I would LOVE to see a Tea Party event run by Robert’s Rules of Order because I’m sure that in about 5 minutes of the start some Tea Partiers would be pulling out their (permitted hidden carry) guns and demanding to be heard, “rules of order” be damned.
Actually, I think Peter Wood would think that using a dictionary to look up a word like “mob” would be a good idea before using it carelessly or even provocatively as he did in this post. Cadman might want to use a dictionary to look up the correct spelling of the Badger State.
Interesting suggestion, though, to expel students automatically who swarm around after football games or are drunk and disorderly on State Street.
Chuck Kleinhans
chuckkle - September 25, 2011 at 5:53 pm
It would be a whole lot easier to grant some higher reasoning or policy aim to the anti-diversity crowd if they showed any concern for the racial inequality built into the K-12 system. After 13 years of manifest inequality, they suddenly want everything to be a level playing field. If Peter Wood and CEO would address preferential admissions for legacies and athletes it would be a lot easier to think they are genuinely concerned with meritocracy in admissions. As it is, they’re busy shoring up more privilege for the already privileged.
Chuck Kleinhans
peterwwood - September 25, 2011 at 6:40 pm
I linked the entire report. the data you ask for is a click away, though you don’t seem to understand what an “odds ratio” is. The answer to your question is pretty apparent in the figures I cited.
Peter Wood
peterwwood - September 25, 2011 at 7:08 pm
My tiresome critic Chuckkle is tireless in the pursuit of attempts to change the subject. I have no fondness at all for legacy admissions or preferences for athletes. I don’t recall on any occasion defending such distortions of college admissions based on academic merit. But there is a difference between such distortions and race-based preferences. The nation fought a Civil War to end slavery and passed the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which includes the Equal Protection Clause, which provides that all citizens in all jurisdiction receives equal protection of the laws, e.g. without regard for racial identity. The decision in Brown v. The Board of Education was based on the Equal Protection Clause. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 includes Title VI which prohibits racial discrimination by agencies that receive federal funds; Title VII prohibits discrimination against an individual on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The U.S. Supreme Court over decades of decisions limited the use of “racial classifications” to extreme situations, e.g. ones that passed the two-part test of “strict scrutiny.”
All of this, in addition to common sense, points to a fundamental difference between racial preferences in college admissions and preferences for “legacy” students or athletes. The latter two may be wrong-headed (as many, including me, believe) but they are indisputably legal, and they have no direct connection to the profound harm we do ourselves by making racial identity a salient factor in deciding college admissions.
Peter Wood
chuckkle - September 25, 2011 at 8:56 pm
Excellent response. Thanks for clarifying your position on legacies and athletes. Now, how about the other matter, the race inequality in the K-12 system? (Actually, I don’t imagine Peter Wood is totally oblivious to this; but his sycophants certainly are.)
BTW, this quick response by Wood is fine evidence that he must have this automatic instant notification that cwm4c alludes to. Perhaps cwm4c will now advise Wood to chill out.
Chuck Kleinhans
Ciocccholly - September 25, 2011 at 9:32 pm
More chuckles from Chuck with his tendentious and predictable bait and switch routine when it comes to the racist conceits imbedded in the diversity industry.
Roger Clegg and CEO documented the rampant racial and ethnic double standards in the U.W. admissions process.
Peter Wood dispassionately explored the BAMN-style thuggery and maniacal behavior on display by the legions of the diversity brownshirts who despise being exposed. Chuck has few problems with those censorious thugs.
Now comes Chuck inquiring about K-12 education. We are talking here about racist flaw and double standards in university admissions. Try to keep with us on this one Chuck, and go read the CEO report for starters.
Steve Baker - September 26, 2011 at 6:10 am
From Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn: ‘The pitifulest thing out is a mob; … they don’t fight with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass.”
teapartydoc - September 26, 2011 at 8:41 am
Graduate programs have seen a drop in enrollment. The universities are dumbing down curricula and using every trick in the book to attract students that pay out-of-state tuition. The price continues to rise at rates that outstrip inflation–even now. Soon the public will have had their fill and will ask their state legislatures to acknowledge alternative forms of certification and recognition of educational achievement. The university is looking into an abyss in which an inevitable decline and eventual free fall are going to happen. What we end up with is unpredictable. All we can say for sure is it won’t be what we have now.
Ciocccholly - September 26, 2011 at 11:31 am
The behavior of Damon Williams, with its appallingly racist insinuations, is proof that hurling racial charges and epithets remains a way to get ahead on many university campuses by creating dubious, tawdry administrative positions, then staffed with folks like Williams who stoke the very fires they claim need to be put out!
softshellcrab - September 26, 2011 at 4:03 pm
What “…racial inequality built into the K-12 system” are you talking about? News to me. Is there any evidence or documentation to back that up?
Yes, inner city schools disproportionatly filled with poor children with one parent tend to be low performing, if not also less safe, etc. But it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with anything “built in”. What do you mean ‘built in”? Big city school systems that are mostly minority, like Detroit, Cleveland, etc. tend to spend more per pupil on average than suburbs do. Look it up.
The students skip school, drop out, get pregnant, cause trouble in school, and fail to do their homework, and the resulting poor school is someboy else’s fault?
marka - September 26, 2011 at 6:19 pm
I’ve actually watched the video of the event. Certainly saw young people shouting loudly in unison. Maybe a ‘mob’? Certainly trying to be disruptive.
Looked again @ DoubleTree’s press release – its manager characterizes the group as a mob – states that they knocked down his employees – sounds more like a mob to me.
Then, a number of accounts have this group going to the room en masse towards its end. Apparently no debate that this terminated the questions & answers by those already there. Again, certainly disrupting proceedings. Prof Olneck, trying to defend groups actions, admits that those actions had the intent of, and the effect of, terminating the conference.
Finally the wink & nod of the demagogue: “Don’t wait for us to show the way.” The coward’s way of inciting riot.
If it looks like a mob, sounds like a mob, pushes like a mob, and acts like a mob … probably a mob.
Lou Ann Watson - September 27, 2011 at 10:49 am
let me guess, wisconsin has very strict gun laws? we in fla have a right to carry and there is no “duty to retreat” if you are attacked in any place you have a lawful right to be. militant leftists need to be much more careful when trying to mob an event in our state. citizens don’t have to wait for the police to get there to be “fair” as determined by politically correct police commissioners. notice no arrests were made…people were assaulted and because the hotel is too timid for whatever reason, no one was charged with anything. feel good about that? some time in the near future it will be union thugs with baseball bats, it’s the eventual progression…don’t call me paranoid, just call me prepared
sand6432 - September 30, 2011 at 1:45 pm
So, how does one separate out admission decisions based on racial preference from decisions based on preferences for athletes? Did the CEO report attempt any such analysis by, say, eliminating all those admission decisions that resulted in athletic scholarships being given to minorities? — Sandy Thatcher
graddirector - February 20, 2012 at 9:59 am
Well, it sounds like you have two big advantages that make this less rough. One, you have a large amount of teaching experience and presumably lectures/syllabi already prepared for your five classes. The first time I taught as a new tenure track assistant professor I was assigned graduate classes that I had not considered the material for in 10 years. I was probably spending well over 20 hours per week just preparing for the lectures in each class, not including grading, office hours etc. A 5:5 load just would not have been possible.
The other is that you are in a position lacking scholarship pressure. Good scholarship requires intensive periods of uninterrupted time, but the pull of teaching and service destroys that time. Further, with the extremely high levels of competition that have been developing in the past few years (particularly in STEM scholarship), ones best never seems to be enough.
Cathy Hinga - February 20, 2012 at 11:36 am
Aren’t you supposed to use your “spare time” to develop courses, advise, meet with prospective students, do peer reviewed research with students, go to professional meetings, have office hours, and be on faculty committees? And if you are a science professor you need to set up your labs.
armartinez4 - February 20, 2012 at 12:35 pm
Thanks for this post! It’s nice to see a bit of optimism from time to time. There are so many people in the shoes you’ve described prior to your tenure-track job… Also, you did say you still work hard – it’s just nice to be better compensated/appreciated for the hard work you do put in.
andreology - February 20, 2012 at 3:02 pm
Yup, it’s the haves and the have-nots.
totoro - February 20, 2012 at 7:40 pm
How many hours in the class-room then is a 5/5 load? It can’t be more than 15 a week. A 2/2 load at the R1 university I used to work at was 8 hours a week in the classroom. For someone teaching new courses in technical areas there is a huge amount of prep involved. Oh and we were supposed to do research, apply for grants, advise PhD students etc. So for the first year or two it is a huge workload. After that it got easier.
David Barber - February 21, 2012 at 5:18 pm
I really enjoy this piece, especially in light of the recent ‘adjunct pay project’ ( http://adjunctproject.com/) the Chronicle wrote about. It demonstrates how, if you subject someone to a terrible job situation long enough, when they get a (good? acceptable?) one, they will be ecstatic.
aephirah - May 18, 2012 at 6:10 pm
The last thing my Translation students worked on this semester was an excerpt from “La region mas transparente.” It provided both a challenge and a sense of accomplishment. We have lost a giant but he has left an impressive legacy.
bevo98 - May 21, 2012 at 8:22 am
What rich legacy he leaves not just of writing but, as this author recognizes, of being an important figure in Mexico and the world. We need more public intellectuals.