If your Facebook picture is of you and your buddies putting a dent in a bottle of Jose Cuervo on your 19th birthday, pay attention.
If you list “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and “Dazed ‘ Confused” as your favorite movies, pay attention.
If your interests include: “shroomin’ in the fishbowl,” pay attention.
The enormously popular Facebook, which boasts tens of thousands of collegiate subscribers now poses a dangerous threat to its users. And yes, it’s more dangerous than the frequent poking of that creepy guy who sits behind you in your 8 a.m. class.
A Fisher College student was expelled last week for starting a Facebook group criticizing a campus police officer, which leads one to wonder: Hey, since when does administration look at Facebook?
At Northeastern, this is a scary thought. We attend a university that could introduce ankle bracelets and daily urine tests and nobody would be all that shocked. After a September in which more alcohol was confiscated than in the heyday of Elliot Ness, all those pictures of you and your underaged friends could devolve from “fond memories” to “circumstantial evidence.”
For students, it can go even deeper. What would stop a professor, a boss or a police officer from skimming through Facebook profiles under the search terms: “marijuana” and “40s.” What prevents them from scanning “My Parties” for an agenda of Saturday night’s drunken festivities? What can stop them from accessing your screen name, your away message, and seeing “utterly wasted at Davenport?”
The answer is: Nothing.
Granted it’s in the best interest of the University to put a clamp down on parties and deter underaged drinking and drug use. But as students we can only implore the adminstration to respect Facebook as what it is: a forum designed by and for students and students only.
While the tactics of Saturday night NUPD party raids are tactless, turning to Facebook, a forum that encourages such inane tasks as poking and starting groups to keep your roommate from peeing in the shower, is ridiculous and a severe invasion of privacy.
In the case of Fisher College, a student took exception with an official, and started a group mocking him. He did so in a student forum, not in a newspaper, or in a book titled “This Guy Sucks.”
The Facebook, at the end of the day, is a tool for students to get to know one another, contact friends from high school and stalk that gorgeous blonde girl in economics (OK, maybe not that last one).
What it is not is a registry for police to keep track of students. Hopefully, the powers that be realize this before they poke one of us right to OSCCR.
