If it’s against campus policy and it’s posted
online, it’s fair game, according to officials at UC Santa
Barbara, but UCLA administrators say similar policies will not yet
be implemented.
Officials at UCSB recently announced that students living on
campus can be disciplined by the school for the photographs and
information they post in their personal profile section on Web
sites such as Facebook, an online directory that connects people
through social networks at schools.
Administrators told the Daily Nexus campus newspaper that
officials will not be actively searching for evidence of illegal
activities online, such as drinking in the residence halls, but
such materials could be used to spark an investigation into a
violation. A housing official also said there is no formal policy
in place regarding the Facebook or other Web sites.
The residential life handbook at UCSB states “parties with
alcohol are prohibited in the residence hall community.”
But it is unlikely that such a policy will be implemented at
UCLA, said Brian Carlisle, associate dean of students.
“There is no policy regarding specifically the Facebook,
and I’m not aware of any plans to implement a policy,”
Carlisle said.
But Carlisle warned about “posting information in any
location, if in doing so you violate the law or university
policy.”
“Certainly the university would consider disciplinary
action,” he said.
From a legal standpoint, students have no right to protest
disciplinary action taken over information they voluntarily put on
a web site accessible to other people, said Eugene Volokh, UCLA
professor.
“If you choose to make something public, you can’t
turn around and say you have privacy rights,” Volokh
said.
Posting photos and other information providing evidence of
illegal conduct up on the internet voluntarily reveals that
behavior, he said, emphasizing “if you want to keep something
private, don’t tell total strangers about it.”
Students potentially facing punishment at UCSB are “not
being disciplined because the university is trying to prohibit them
from saying something. They’re being disciplined because
they’re providing evidence of their illegal conduct,”
he said.
The creators of Facebook claim no responsibility or protection
for its users.
“Students can technically be held accountable for what
they post on Facebook because it is a public forum,” Chris
Hughes, spokesman for Facebook, wrote in an e-mail interview.
Students who don’t want faculty members to be able to see
their profiles can always change that option in their privacy
settings, Hughes wrote.
Safety and privacy of students are UCLA’s main concerns
regarding online networks such as Facebook or similar Web sites
such as Myspace.com, Carlisle said.
“There’s a much greater issue with the Facebook, in
that students submit a lot of personal, private information
available for the public to view,” Carlisle said.
“We’re not so much worried about policy
violations,” Carlisle said. “What we want to encourage
students to do is to be cautious about the kind of information they
put on there.”