Admissions of Guilt

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Admissions of Guilt

Should information about applicants found on the Web but not submitted by them be used in admissions decisions?

7/19/2007

By Terry Calhoun

One of the discussions I have been in for the last week or two has been about the growing use within academia of MySpace information for what verges on "official" purposes. Apparently one of the newer issues for those who manage first-year students is an increase in requests for changes in residence hall assignments based on information students are finding out about each other in MySpace.

One campus professional shared: "The bigger issue on the admission side is people wanting to shuffle room assignments because of the info they learn about new roommates before meeting them. It's not so much about taking the adventure out of living on campus, but about intolerance for the big issues like race & religion."

This is not something that suits the professional perspective of many of us. Helping students avoid some of the growth experiences that we consider essential to the college experience feels uncomfortable.

But getting to know something about people before you know them, or even after you know them a little bit, can be useful--and also fun. Last week at my employer's annual conference, I received a call to come up to the ballroom level of the Chicago Sheraton and meet a member who had an idea for me. I happened to be at my computer when the call came in, so I Googled the member instantly, before I headed up the escalator.

When I arrived, we shook hands, and even before we introduced each other I stood back a bit, stroked my chin and looked thoughtful and said: "Let me see ... architecture ... Princeton ... '82, right?" It was a fun ice breaker, and we had a good chat. It turned out to be a very good idea, one I hope we can implement for our 2008 conference in Montreal.

But that was relatively harmless. Another story I was recently told was about a law student at a respected southern school who, upon his return to school in the fall after a summer internship, dissed one of the law firm's partners on his MySpace page. The attorney discovered this, then wrote the law school and asked that his letter of recommendation be rescinded. The law school complied with the request.

And, again, that is sort of harmless, in terms of risks to the school. It happens that writers of letters of recommendation rescind them from time to time, and it's no skin off the school's nose as to why, really.

Many have admitted that they do, informally, check out certain students--student leaders, potential student staffers, and so forth--in MySpace.

But back to the "official" stuff: This recent discussion started about a student's request to have a new roommate assignment after learning more about their assigned roommate. This was not a case of religious or racial bias, however. It was more serious than that. It was the kind of stuff that, in the wake of the Virginia Tech killings, sends shudders though parents' and administrators' bodies. As the writer put it, "some sort of paean to automatic weapons, explosives, violence, and destruction."