Bad Online Behavior Jeopardizes Students' College Plans
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Bad Online Behavior Jeopardizes Students' College Plans
By Robin L. Flanigan
Stellar transcripts aside, students now have to worry about an
increasing number of colleges peering at their social-networking pages
online—and potentially denying their applications because of what they
find there.
The number of college-admissions officials using Facebook and other
social-networking sites to learn more about applicants quadrupled over
the past year, according to New York City-based Kaplan Test Prep, the
test preparation division of Kaplan Inc.
In the company’s 2011 survey of admissions officers from the top 500
colleges and universities, 24 percent said they have viewed publicly
available pages to get a clearer picture of an applicant, while 20
percent turned to Google. Twelve percent reported that their
discoveries, including photos showing underage drinking, vulgarities
in blogs, and plagiarism in essays, negatively affected the chance of
admission.
Educators, mostly at the high school level, use assemblies, classroom
discussions, and guidance sessions to warn students about such
consequences. But even educators who say they continuously hammer home
the golden rule—in essence, that students should never post anything
online they wouldn’t want their parents to see—are finding it hard to
get through to a generation weaned on social media.
“The disconnect happens because of their age and level of maturity,”
said Franklin N. Caesar, the principal of the 1,875-student Central
Islip Senior High School in Central Islip, N.Y. “We’re constantly
dealing with students who are inappropriate in what they say online.”
Two years ago, he started meeting with principals at lower-level
schools to talk about the daily altercations he was dealing with
because of comments posted on Facebook and other social-networking
sites. They have met regularly since, and this year began an education
program for 5th graders to address the potential ramifications of
their online behavior—including a rejected college application.
“By bombarding them with information at that age,” said Mr. Caesar,
“and then again in the sixth grade, seventh grade, and eighth grade,
we’re hoping that by the time they get to high school, they’ll
understand and it will make a difference. It’s too late if they get
here and they haven’t been hearing that message.”
In the meantime, guidance counselors at Central Islip convey that
message in a senior assembly at the beginning of the year and during
an annual technology fair.
Eric Sheninger, the principal of the 680-student New Milford High
School in New Milford, N.J., recalled having students in a Digital
Journalism class Google themselves to become more familiar with their
digital footprints. The students, in grades 9-12, were surprised at
the “page after page of content” that came up. One girl was astonished
when she found a picture of herself she’d never seen before; she
couldn’t even remember where or when it was taken.
Next, Mr. Sheninger took a poll: Seventy-five percent of the students
had accepted a “friend” request on Facebook from someone they’d never
met. He had them consider the fact that if they post an inappropriate
picture, anyone can easily take a screen shot of that image and post
it anywhere online without permission.
Teaching Better Online Behavior
Experts say schools can take steps to help students avoid engaging in
online behavior that could jeopardize their chances of being accepted
into college. Steps include:
Start Disussions Early
Conversations about the impact social-media pages can have on the
college-admissions process should start long before high school.
Students have had years of opportunity by then to create questionable
profiles.
Encourage Web Searches
Have students Google themselves. They’ll likely be surprised and
sometimes very concerned at what turns up.
Repeat the Message
Drill home in classrooms, assemblies, and guidance-counselor meetings
the potential dangers of inappropriate social-media behavior.
Get Parents Involved
Chances are that parents are unaware that their child’s digital
footprint can affect college applications, and many times what happens
outside of school ends up spilling onto school grounds and quickly
onto social-networking sites.
Craft a Formal Plan
Lower-, middle-, and high school-level educators would do well to
co-develop a formalized plan for encouraging positive social-media
choices and stressing the dangers of poor ones.
SOURCE: Education Week
“Then I told them, ‘Let’s say a college pulls up that image. They’re
going to think twice about accepting you.’ You use an example like
that to rev it up a notch,” he said.
Mr. Sheninger added that he repeated that point in two recent
assemblies: “You can get a good feel of whether students are engaged.
Every one of them was quiet and their eyes were forward. You could
tell they were thinking, ‘Wow, we’ve never really thought about this.’
”
Formalize Instruction?
That’s exactly why Fredrick McDowell, the headmaster of the
1,150-student Brighton High School, which is part of the Boston public
schools, believes schools need a greater effort across the board to
formalize instruction on making positive social-media choices—and on
the growing number of repercussions that can result from poor ones.
“You’d be hard-pressed to find schools that have an official
curriculum they’re using about this,” he said. “And I think that, as
educators, we start too late with these conversations.”
At Brighton, behavior on social-networking sites that has spilled over
into school has been directly linked to suspensions, assaults, and
criminal records. In an attempt to fix the problem, the school has
intensified efforts to teach juniors and seniors about appropriate Web
use, with involvement from classroom teachers, guidance counselors,
administrators at grade-level assemblies, and guest speakers from
local law-enforcement agencies.
It’s even harder for middle school students to make a connection
between their current social-media behavior and future college plans.
In fact, they often separate their actions from consequences in
general. Students regularly post comments online that they would never
say in person, and as they try to deal with new social pressures, they
tend to forget that the virtual worlds they create are far from
private.
As a result, sometimes the character portrayed online bears little
resemblance to a student’s true character, a situation that routinely
continues into the high school years when it’s college-application
time, said Carolyn Walker, the vice principal of curriculum and
instruction at Natomas Middle School in Sacramento, Calif. The school
serves 950 students in grades 7 and 8.
“Everybody wants to fit the norm, to be cool,” Ms. Walker said. “These
kids are digital natives, and social media is a way for them to get
their voices out there and be heard.
“We just have to keep talking more and more with them about how they
can do that in a way that gives an image of themselves that’s real,”
she said, “as opposed to what they think people want to see and hear.
We don’t have a proper avenue right now to communicate that, though.
We could be doing more.”
Murky Legal Issues
Kaplan’s annual survey also pointed out that most higher education
institutions do not have official guidelines governing how
social-networking pages should factor into the admission equation.
Social-media experts predict the ethical and legal implications will
likely remain uncertain until there is clear legal ground on the
subject.
At some colleges, admissions officers track an applicant’s digital
footprint only after receiving an anonymous tip—likely from a
competing applicant or parent, according to some college-admissions
experts.
“We recommend that there be a policy in place on the use of
information that bubbles up through these very public sites, but the
one thing a policy doesn’t always cover is what happens when the
information is just laid on the table,” said David Hawkins, the
director of public policy and research for the National Association
for College Admission Counseling, based in Arlington, Va. “Colleges
can’t just ignore something that has been brought to their attention.”
North Carolina State University has denied applications based in part
on information gleaned from publicly available sites. Administrators
conduct online searches only after red flags are raised during the
application process.
“Before we bring new people into our campus community, we want to make
sure they’re going to be a good fit for us,” said Thomas Griffin, the
school’s director of undergraduate admissions.
The rejections are due largely to safety concerns and are handed down
only after “a thorough, thoughtful evaluation of the situation,” added
Mr. Griffin.
Though North Carolina State is not yet doing random online searches of
its more than 25,000 undergraduate applicants, that step is something
officials are talking about.
And with the student-recruiting firm TargetX integrating Facebook and
Twitter into the technology program it designed specifically for
admissions offices, those searches are getting even easier. The
Conshohocken, Pa.-based firm has made it so that with one click on a
social-network icon, admissions officers can instantly link to an
applicant’s profile, allowing institutions to see “the most complete
and authentic picture” of their prospects, said Chief Executive
Officer Brian Niles. (On one random search while providing a remote
demonstration of the technology, Mr. Niles quickly came across “sexy
time” as one student’s entry under “activities.”)
Information Alerts
Enterpreneur Geoffrey Arone, seeing a business opportunity in
social-networking searches, co-founded a Web-based Internet-monitoring
service for parents that lets them stay informed about the status
updates, photos, videos, and other personal information their children
are sharing online. SafetyWeb, which Mr. Arone helped devise after
seeing the searches firsthand while conducting college-admission
interviews for his alma maters, Brown University and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, automatically sends alerts when personal
information is posted that could put a child’s privacy, safety, and
online reputation at risk.
Related Blog
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Some students acknowledge that they post questionable statements
online despite warnings at school.
Nick Cicchinelli, a junior at the 2,800-student Lakota West High
School in West Chester, Ohio, said that he tries for the most part to
keep his Facebook comments “PG” because his parents are in his
network, but that he occasionally writes things he shouldn’t.
“Sometimes I just don’t think about it,” he said.
So while educators can provide the advice, they can’t make students heed it.
“Kids are all different,” said Freida Trujillo, a high school resource
counselor for the 90,000-student Albuquerque district in New Mexico.
“Some are going to take the message to heart and try to be diligent,
and others are going to do what they normally do. It’s going to depend
on the student.”
Robin L. Flanigan is a freelance writer based in Rochester, N.Y.