All Posts Tagged With: "Facebook"
There’s a new social media obsession on campus
And it’s a haven for racist, sexist trolls
Facebook. Twitter. MSN. Google Plus. There’s no shortage of places for students to chat, opine, or procrastinate during finals. Yet there’s a new digital obsession spreading across Canadian campuses. It’s called OMG and it’s simple. Students submit short “Oh My Gods” about anything. Then, they’re posted to the site.
As a Waterloo student who found myself distracted by OMGUW far too often in December, I got thinking about what makes it so hard to look away. I wanted to know what makes it so enticing that it has spread from Waterloo to Guelph, Saskatchewan and Toronto, with tens of thousands of views.
Continue reading There’s a new social media obsession on campus
Should you friend your prof?
Prof. Pettigrew’s unofficial rules for social networking
Photo by luc legay on Flickr
Considering how ubiquitous social media sites are, it’s surprising that few universities in Canada seem to have policies providing guidance for how faculty members, or students for that matter, should use them in the university setting.
Some universities do have guidelines, like these at Brock, but they seem to be mainly interested in protecting the university’s brand and keeping the school out of lawsuits. Those kinds of guidelines don’t hurt, but they don’t help professors know what’s acceptable and appropriate.
I know some professors where I work wish there was a policy—my student is trying to friend me, what do I do? And my own observation reveals a wide range of attitudes as to what’s okay and what’s not. Some treat their student friends on Facebook just like everyone else; others never connect with their students and regard those who do with scorn.
Can you blame Facebook for your bad grades? Maybe.
Some activities may lead to lower marks
Photo by Spencer E Holtaway on Flickr
It’s common to use Facebook as a scapegoat for poor academic performance. That’s because a few small studies have shown that grades are lower among students who spend more time on the social media site. The assumption has always been that more time spent on Facebook translates to less time spent studying, which leads to lower grades.
But a newer, bigger U.S. study has found that Facebook time and study time are only weakly related. It takes many extra hours of posting and chatting before grades start to slip. What’s more, although the new study found negative relationships between grades and certain types of Facebook activities, other types of activities appear to be a associated with higher grades.
Continue reading Can you blame Facebook for your bad grades? Maybe.
That’s ‘professor’ uptight to you
Website offers profs group therapy
Photo by Laura Mills
June Madeley is annoyed with the increasingly rude demands she gets from students at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John. Ten years ago, it was common for them to see her during office hours when they had a question. “Now there’s an expectation that we’ll answer their emails immediately and meet them whenever there’s a good time for them.” And as surely as the leaves pile up on campus each October, the communications professor knows her inbox will soon fill with complaints about mid-terms scheduled for the week after the Thanksgiving holiday. “There are a lot of people who feel they can’t make the exam because of travel arrangements,” she says. “And others who think it’s unfair that they have to study that weekend.”
But when Madeley gets frustrated, she doesn’t fire off a snotty email to the student. She logs on to “That’s ‘Professor’ Uptight to You, Johnny,” a Facebook group with 297 members, all of them teaching at universities and colleges. The members-only site is a place where university educators can vent in the form of steaming emails they wish they could write to their students but can’t because that would be, well, rude. Madeley, who says she hasn’t posted yet, enjoys reading the rants from her colleagues. The site is run by Khrystyne Keane, a Connecticut-based editor for a non-profit group, who took over its administration as a favour to a professor friend. The logo—a unicorn standing under a rainbow—is a jab at students, some of whom feel they are every bit as special as the fabled one-horned horse and the multicoloured arc.
The posts are all written to anonymous Janeys and Johnnies, but they share one trait: carefully crafted sarcasm. “Dear Johnny, I suspect that if you had spent as much time and effort on your last assignment as you did on the long flaming email you just sent me, this whole ‘conversation’ would never have happened,” reads one. “Dear Janey, I want to assure you that we didn’t do anything important in class. We just stared out the window for three hours in silence,” reads another.
Nothing riles a professor more than asking about material covered in a skipped lecture. But Joey O’Kane, a vice-president of the University of New Brunswick Student Union, thinks it’s no big deal. He also thinks it’s reasonable to expect email responses from profs within 24 hours, preferably 12. “Professors have a pretty good gig,” he says. “You put in some office hours, you teach for a few hours and then you end up with a decent paycheque, so taking 10 minutes out of your day to respond to a few emails . . . I don’t think that’s asking too much.”
Kevin Maness, another Facebook member from Eastern University in Pennsylvania, recalls a student who emailed him a couple of weeks after the last semester ended and asked if there was anything he could do to increase his grade because he had been “too busy” playing basketball. Incredulous, Maness wanted to shoot off a caustic retort. Long before he had even heard about That’s “Professor” Uptight, someone else had addressed the same complaint with a post that read: “Dear Johnny, Just tell me the grade you want and I’ll change it in the book, because it doesn’t really matter anyway.” After joining the group last month, Maness has found it to be “great group therapy.”
When Maness attended the University of Pennsylvania in the early ’90s, he accepted that professors would challenge him. In return for doing the coursework, he was rewarded with the grade he had earned. Now, if he hands out a C-minus “it’s almost like a complete shock to them.”
So why the attitude? In their book Lowering Higher Education: The Rise of Corporate Universities and the Fall of Liberal Education, University of Western Ontario sociologists James Côté and Anton Allahar say it started when higher education became purely a financial exchange. Funding pressures forced universities to accept as many students as possible, even those who weren’t suited to academics, says Côté. That crowds lecture halls with students who shouldn’t be there.
At the very least, one educator feels students should learn to mind their manners. At the University of Minnesota, law professor Michele Goodwin added “civility” to her course requirements this September. “Failure to follow this guideline will affect your final grade,” she wrote in the class syllabus, explaining that emails should include the basic salutation “Dear Professor Goodwin” and not “Hey Prof.”
She even assigned practice email as homework. “It’s a bit awkward for professors to think, wow, this is actually my job now?” says Goodwin, who blogs for industry publication The Chronicle of Higher Education, “but it’s necessary.” If the new rules don’t work out, at least she has a place to commiserate. The professor can always join That’s “Professor” Uptight to You, Johnny.
Editor’s Note: I wrote this story for the print edition of Maclean’s. As both Profs. Maness and Magatha have pointed out in the comments section, it should have included more nuance. For one, I should have made it more clear that every single professor I spoke to for this piece exuded passion for teaching. Indeed, research shows that North American professors work on average around 55 hours per week and many of those hours are dedicated to helping students learn beyond the classroom—something they get little credit for. The profs. also made it clear that there are many students who don’t fit the stereotype of entitled. I agree. While it’s a challenge to decide what to include in the space allotted, I should have done a better job. I also want to note that there was a factual error in this story that was introduced in the editing process. Maness did not read a complaint “months earlier” from another professor who sarcastically offered to change a student’s grade. That was merely what he said he might have written had he know about the page at the time.
Protecting free speech for teachers in a social media world
Florida teacher should keep his job: Pettigrew
Photo courtesy of Spencer E Holtaway on Flickr
Florida teacher Jerry Buell has been suspended from teaching after posting controversial comments on his Facebook page. The American history teacher was angered by a TV news report on the legalization of gay marriage in New York, according to Fox News. ”I almost threw up,” he wrote in a post. “If they want to call it a union, go ahead. But don’t insult a man and woman’s marriage by throwing it in the same cesspool of whatever. God will not be mocked. When did this sin become acceptable?”
School district officials say that Buell has crossed a line, that teachers are bound by special codes of ethics, and that a Facebook page is a public forum.
Nonsense. Readers of this space will know that I am an outspoken advocate for the rights of gays and lesbians. (This post, for example.) And I hasten to point out that Buell’s statements are, in my judgement, stupid and mean-spirited. But he has the right to make them.
A Facebook page is a personal expression of one’s own particular tastes and attitudes. Indeed, it is hard to think of any mode of communication more centered on an individual. Buell was describing his revulsion toward love unlike his own; he did not claim to be speaking for the Lake County School District, or for Mount Dora High School or for anyone else.
I have sympathy with those who believe a gay student may now be uncomfortable in this guy’s class.
But if the standard is whether someone could potentially be uncomfortable, that’s casting much too wide a net. If that standard holds, it could be used to restrict the expression of almost any comment on any controversial issue. Suppose, for instance, Buell had said the reverse. Suppose he had celebrated the gay marriage legislation in New York. Would some devout Christians feel uncomfortable in his class?
Probably. The question must not be what a student heard about what a teacher said on the internet. The test must be: how does that teacher comport himself in class? If he’s worth his salary, he should take special care to make sure that when controversial issues come up, he presents all sides fairly. I myself am a committed atheist, but when religious questions come up — as they often do in literary studies — I try to ensure that the discussion is appropriately balanced.
In cases like Jerry Buell’s, people are quick to point out that there are limits to free speech; of course there are. But in a free society those limits have to be clearly defined and enforced only when absolutely necessary. If being wrong on Facebook is a crime, who among us is safe?
As long as he’s keeping his opinion to himself in class, Jerry Buell should keep his job.
Blanket-ban on social media in high schools
Rhode Island legislators say Facebook causes bullying
The U.S. state Rhode Island has passed an “anti-bullying” law that creates a state-wide ban on the use of social networking sites anywhere on school property. As The Huffington Post points out, that means students won’t be able to access the legislature’s own Facebook page, which could make it difficult for the government to extend its fan-base beyond the eight people who have “liked” it so far.
Banning student-teacher Facebook interaction smart
Learning environments need to be kept public
With yesterday’s announcement, the Ontario College of Teachers is likely trying to prevent as much social media abuse from both students and teachers as possible.
While most teachers’ first reaction is “duh” to the news that they shouldn’t “friend” their students in Facebook or follow them on Twitter, in reality this rule now exists because some teachers don’t share that same reaction.
Most teachers, and even most students, recognize that becoming Facebook or Twitter friends with a teacher presents a host of uncomfortable — and potentially damaging — situations. That’s why even university professors like Leslie Chan have strict rules governing online interaction with current students.
But in what is widely being described as a prudent advisory to set the appropriate tone for all teachers, the College is making sure the rule is hereby carved in stone. And it’s a good thing, too.
All learning should take place in public where the opportunity for teachers and students to take advantage of each other is next to nothing. Engaging with students in any unregulated online capacity — whether it’s Facebook, email or instant messaging — effectively closes the door on any checks and balances that currently exist in the school system.
It’s the same logic that keeps parents from letting their children spend time alone with a teacher in an uncontrolled environment. Even teachers with the best of intentions can get caught in some very hot water.
This is where abuse happens. Just yesterday a teacher in Idaho pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a junior high school student. The teacher was suspended by the school district after he was accused of impersonating a teenage boy and engaging in sexual conduct online with a 14-year-old student. He is now facing up to 25 years in jail and a $50,000 fine.
Students and teachers are a bit like church and state: They should be inherently separate. But just as in the separation of church and state, sometimes people try to blur the lines of division and must be reigned in. It’s inappropriate — and often criminal — when it happens, and we all shake our heads. But we have to recognize that it does happen and it makes rules like this one all the more necessary.
The biggest threat to Harper campaign: Student photos with Iggy
UWO student ejected from Harper rally for Facebook picture with Ignatieff
All you F-35 Joint Strike Fighter naysayers—this’ll make you bite your tongues. After all, the proof is in the pudding, and just this past weekend, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives proved the need to stay vigilant against enemies, many of whom can appear in even the most innocuous of forms.
Of course, I’m talking about 19-year-old University of Western Ontario student Awish Aslam, who managed to infiltrate a Harper rally in London on Sunday despite having a Facebook picture of her with Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. The audacity, I know. How the undecided voter managed to get in, I’m not sure; but she and a friend were escorted out of the rally shortly after signing in.
According to Aslam, a man led them to a back room, tore up their name tags, and told them they weren’t welcome at the event. “We were confused,” Aslam told the London Free Press. “He said, ‘We know you guys have ties to the Liberal party through Facebook.’”
I don’t know how many times we must drill this message home, but students: Please exercise discretion when posting things online! Yes, you may have a night where you down too many beers with friends and decide to ‘Like’ the Canadian Learning Passport on the Liberal Facebook page, but others will notice your actions! And it goes further than that. Every time you sign onto Farmville and don’t post a comment about the long-gun registry, know you’re making a political statement. For every occasion you send a ‘Poke,’ you should be requesting a fitness tax credit. And finally, never, ever, ever, refer to a group message as a “Coalition.” Vague insinuations are fine, though.
All parties want to encourage the youth vote, of course, but they can’t help it if young people disenfranchise themselves through mistakes like these. Young people should know better than to explore their political options before casting a vote –and worse yet–posting a totally meaningless picture online. Remember: don’t chew Big Red on Harper’s turf, unless you plan to stick it on the bottom of your shoe.
York TA apologizes for criticizing her students
Sociology department still investigating ‘regrettable and inappropriate’ Facebook comments
The York University tutorial assistant who criticized her students on Facebook has apologized. According to campus paper the Excalibur, the status update from sociology TA Bianca Baggiarini, read in part: “My student’s papers are making me dumber, so very stupid; by the minute. Please, make them, stop.” Posted on Feb. 22, the comments have since been taken down. Chair of the sociology department, Nancy Mandell, told the Toronto Star that Baggiarini has now apologized for her actions. “She’s very sincere in that apology,” Mandell said, but added that the comments were “very regrettable and inappropriate,” and that they show “a lack of respect for students.” The department is still investigating the matter.
York investigates TA for Facebook comments
Tutorial assistant wrote ‘My student’s papers are making me dumber’
York University is investigating a tutorial assistant who made disparaging comments about her student’s intelligence on Facebook. According to campus paper the Excalibur, the status update from sociology TA Bianca Baggiarini, read in part: “My student’s papers are making me dumber, so very stupid; by the minute. Please, make them, stop.” Posted on Feb. 22, the comments have since been taken down.
One of the students from Baggiarini’s tutorial told the paper that he was surprised. “It’s definitely not professional mixing work with Facebook, because that is public,” he said. Another student said that “If she assumes that there is an issue – I mean, clearly the TA assumed there was an issue by calling [the students] stupid – and the TA obviously has the opinion that her class is not understanding or really getting it, then I think the remedy should be ‘I’m here to help’ not ‘I’m going to post it on Facebook.”
Sociology chair, Nancy Mandell, whose department is investigating the matter, said that she was “disappointed.” The Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents TAs at York, does not have a policy on social media, and would not comment on the specifics of the case.
Students suspended over Facebook threats
Friends of murdered victim ‘vent’ online
Six Edmonton high school students have been suspended after they posted comments to Facebook threatening retaliation for a friend who was murdered on the weekend. Niko Arlia, 17, was stabbed to death early Sunday morning, an autopsy report released Wednesday revealed. Kevin Moffett, 19, has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder in relation to the case.
Shortly after they learned of Arlia’s death, Mishayla Rocque, a close friend, and five others wrote online comments wishing the killers to suffer, and making threats. The students were suspended from St. Joseph High School on Tuesday, and were recommended for expulsion. “When I posted it was right after I found out, so I was really pissed off and just upset, so I turned to Facebook to vent,” Rocque says.
A spokesperson for the school board said, “They threatened the well-being of other students, and if at any time the well-being of other students is threatened, we take immediate action.”
Nursing students suspended for posting placenta picture on Facebook
School may have overreacted, but students should have known better
A group of nursing students at Johnson County Community College were kicked out of school for posing with a human placenta and posting the photos on Facebook. (It seems the esteemed “in-mirror club shot” for Facebook has effectively been replaced.) According to court documents, the students were visiting a medical centre with their class in November when they asked their teacher if they could take photos with a placenta. The teacher “implied consent” and the girls snapped away, posting the pictures on a least one Facebook page. A few hours later, an instructor requested that the photos be taken down, and the students were informed that they were being “dismissed.” They responded by filing suit against the school.
This story has gone viral south of the border, inciting heated debate about the freedom to post the miscellaneous online and the appropriateness of school sanctions for non-academic conduct. The issue is not foreign to us here in Canada, as the University of Calgary is currently battling a case concerning its punishment of two students for content they posted on Facebook. The rhetoric is usually the same; either “give me freedom and stay off my page” or “privacy is dead, so act responsibly.”
Regarding this particular case, public opinion seems to have come down hard on the school for enforcing such a severe punishment, and it’s not terribly difficult to see why. The placenta the students (inexplicably) decided to pose with was not attributable to an individual; it was an anonymous placenta, in other words. And they weren’t doing anything exceptionally inappropriate with the organ, just posing and snapping photos (which is curious enough, to say the least). But the situation is complicated for a number of reasons. Firstly, the placenta is an organ involved with reproduction and birth, which makes it a little more personal, sensitive, than a lung, for example. It’s the difference between posing with a heart and posing with a pair of severed testicles; one snapshot will elicit a little more reaction. Secondly, the students are studying to be nurses, a job that demands professionalism and empathy, especially when working with patients whose illnesses have robbed them of dignity. Nonchalance in the presence of blood, scars, feces, vomit, etc. (except when medically necessary) is the mark of appropriate bedside manner. Few patients would feel secure watching their nurse gawk at their oddly coloured growth.
But unless the school has explicit rules about appropriate out of class conduct, it seems beyond its parameters to police students’ Facebook pages. If they indeed did get permission from their instructor, they weren’t technically breaking the rules. But the real onus lies with the students. The infalliability of one’s online presence is a myth, a lesson which, unfortunately, students seem to be learning over and over. Skeletons from school left hidden in your closet (or on your wall, in this case) can be detrimental to your career, and should be purged from your page. That means all those aspiring kindergarten teachers should probably take those “dead baby” jokes off their profiles. It is the student’s responsibility to act professionally, not the school’s obligation to look the other way. Even if your professor doesn’t catch you, don’t leave it to your boss.
What is the appropriate level of discipline?
Posting pictures on Facebook is always hazardous, but can the response go too far?
In November, a Kansas student taking part in a lab for her nursing school posed for a photo with a human placenta. That photo, like so many do, wound up on Facebook. But this photo got the soon-to-be graduate kicked out of school.
“Your demeanor and lack of professional behavior surrounding this event was considered a disruption to the learning environment and did not exemplify the professional behavior that we expect in the nursing program,” Jeanne Walsh, director of nursing at the college, wrote in a letter to Doyle Byrnes and quoted in the article by the Kansas City Star.
It should be no surprise to anyone who posts anything on Facebook these days that bad things can come of it. Posting photos to the Internet offers the vast public curiosity a window on poor decisions and creates a permanent record.
But that the web creates an enormously convenient mechanism to track those who do wrong by ensnaring them in their own ignorance is beyond the point. In this case, it appears that Johnson County Community College is grossly over-reacting.
Four students were kicked out of school for taking photos with the placenta, which did not leave the tray in which it was presented to the students. The photo was on the social networking site for a total of three hours. When a school official told the students that the photo was unacceptable, they took it down immediately.
Byrnes has since closed her Facebook account entirely.
She is now seeking an injunction against the college that would allow her to continue her studies before she is married and moves out of the state this summer.
The school, however, is calling it “lesson hard learned.” Hard learned, indeed. But in this case, it sounds more like hard taught.
What the four students did was in poor taste. But the lab in which the photos were taken was supervised. They took the photo down as soon as they were told and have apologized profusely. This is hardly an incident worthy of the expulsion of four students, especially considering they complied with the college’s wishes following the posting. The college should be using this case as an example to ensure it doesn’t happen again, and not punishing students excessively for a little harmless fun.
LikeALittle: creepiest waste of time ever?
Flirting website way more creepy than making an awkward pass at someone on campus
From texting to Skype, there are probably a dozen modes of communication students can use to flirt with each other without ever stepping in the same room. LikeALittle.com, an anonymous online flirting platform, has recently joined the endless number of technologies and social networks that have become a normal part of campus courtship.
It’s easy to understand why LikeALittle has become so popular. It’s nearly impossible to go through your entire university career without ever being attracted to anyone you’ve seen on campus. Yet the campus atmosphere is often not very conducive to acting on those attractions. No one wants to look like they’re trying to pick up a fellow student, since it’s hard to pull off hitting on someone in the library or the classroom without looking embarrassingly creepy. LikeALittle lets students express those attractions, without the risk of making a terrible impression on their peers.
The anonymity of LikeALittle may take the risk of embarrassment out of the equation of flirting, but it definitely does not eliminate the risk of being a sleazeball. How could awkwardly approaching someone be worse than watching them on campus, then posting details you’ve noticed about them on a website for countless people to see? You might as well grab a pair of binoculars and a black trench coat while you’re at it.
It’s odd that for some students, posting flirtatious comments anonymously on LikeALittle seems more acceptable than making a bad pass at someone in person.This not only reflects the popularity of the site amongst students, but also how much technology has changed dating since past generations trekked through the campus dating scene, and not always in a good way.
Nowadays it’s more likely that student’s will add someone on Facebook before asking them for their number, and calling someone before you text them is seen by many as coming on too strong. While this may make dating more convenient, and perhaps less risky for your ego, it also creates a lot of distance between students and their prospective partners. Sometimes it can feel like you have to go through two or three modes of communication before spending time with someone face to face. That can be more of a roadblock to your relationship success than your nerves, since it’s hard get to know someone very well through a computer screen or cell phone.
Daniel Gold, one of the founders of the Queen’s university branch of the site, told Postmedia that one of the best aspects of LikeALittle is that it’s a space online where students can waste time together. I’m all for new modes of procrastination but, considering students don’t have that much time to waste to begin with, there must be better ways of going about it. Call me old fashioned, but talking to the cute guy or girl you spotted on campus seems like a better way of spending your study break than writing about them on some website anonymously. It may pose the risk of bruising your ego if they’re not so keen on this idea, but also has more potential for reward that LikeALittle does not.
Zuckerberg named Time’s Person of the Year
Facebook founder chosen for ‘connecting more than half a billion people’
Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old founder of Facebook and the world’s youngest billionaire, is Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for 2010. The announcement was made Wednesday by Time’s managing editor, Rick Stengel, on NBC’s Today show.
The magazine said Zuckerberg was chosen “for connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives.” The subject of the critically acclaimed, controversial, and—according to Zuckerberg himself—fictionalized biopic “The Social Network” beat out WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the Tea Party organization and the rescued Chilean miners for this year’s title.
Only one person younger then Zuckerberg has ever won the acclamation—aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh, who was named the first person of the year in 1927, when he was 25.
Why your business degree is like an app store
Call it democratizing education if you want, but Facebook MBA is going to make a lot of money.
These days volume is everything. It’s not enough to have a great idea, it has to be a great idea with mass-market potential. That’s the entire business model for smartphone apps like Angry Birds. Alone, a $0.99 app isn’t a strong revenue stream. But when it goes viral, and tens of millions of users start to download the product, it becomes a revolution.
That seems to be the idea behind The London School of Business and Finance’s new Facebook MBA initiative.
With the launch of these MBA classes, the school is allowing students anywhere to check out their program, free of charge, on Facebook before deciding to enrol. Essentially, they are letting prospective students take their product for a test drive before any commitment is made.
“It is the first online MBA, which will be free to all until the optional point of assessment for qualification … there will be [hundreds of] hours of free study resources available to all users, including 80 hours of high definition video content. Unlike all other MBAs, no fees will be required up front allowing students to save for exams or to pay when it suits them financially,” states a press release about the program.
Is it the democratization of education? Or is it the mass-marketing of course materials that will draw in millions in revenue once those students decide to become certified?
By making these classes free, the discussions easily accessible and the course materials available for download, the LSBF is doing more to promote mass business education than almost anything to date. And that their certification program is a fraction of the price of Queen’s University or the University of Toronto only amplifies the draw, which are $65,000 and $75,000, respectively.
What young people interested in an MBA will see is free study opportunities with a cheap certification exam at the end of the line.
Just like with apps, while $23,000 per exam isn’t going to cover the cost of preparing the system and running it, getting thousands of more students interested in the program than could possibly fit in lecture halls will solve the problem through simple volume.
Maybe their new slogan should be: “There’s a Facebook page for that.”
Time for UCalgary to leave students be
The Pridgen brothers won their case, but it’s not over yet
The University of Calgary has decided to appeal an Alberta judge’s ruling not because they disagree with it, but because they want to know how close to the line they can go in the future without the courts stepping in again.
At stake is students’ right to free speech regarding their experiences on a university campus.
The case in question surrounds a Facebook page created by brothers Keith and Steven Pridgen that heavily criticized a professor they both had for a survey law course. Aruna Mitra, the professor, complained to the university after finding these comments online and the university found the brothers guilty of non-academic misconduct, were place on probation and threatened with expulsion if they did not apologize to Mitra.
Typically the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has not applied to universities because they are not government institutions. While they are publically funded, for the most part, universities are deemed legally autonomous, as they are not part of the government infrastructure — i.e. judicial, legislative and executive branches.
But these two students successfully sued the university after a second appeal to the board of governors was denied. Justice Jo’Anne Strekaf’s rulings states: “Students should not be prevented from expressing critical opinions regarding the subject matter or quality of the teaching they are receiving.”
The difference at the University of Calgary, the judge ruled, is that the university was punishing students to try and force desirable behaviour, a job typically performed by government, but universities are allowed to do by legislation. Because these punishments were being carried out in a manner that would normally be dealt with by a government body, the Charter applies.
Interestingly, the University of Calgary has no issue with the ruling and has no intention to pursue further legal action against the Pridgen brothers.
University spokesperson James Stevenson told the Canadian University Press, “This is not about fighting the Pridgens. This is about us trying to seek clarity.”
He said that case law is “all over the map” when it comes to how the Charter applies to universities and the University of Calgary is “seeking clarification as to what aspects the charter plays in day-to-day operations.”
But in doing so, they’re further dragging the Pridgens through hell.
The University of Calgary is right in seeking clarification on what could be a tense legal issue in its future. But at this point the Pridgens should be allowed to continue on with their lives, content that their case was well argued, and well won.
The Charter right to insult your prof
Landmark ruling involving Facebook criticism confirms university actions are government actions
How universities deal with their students may never be the same after an Alberta judge ruled that at least some of their policies and actions can be subject to Charter review. The case involved a challenge from twin brothers, Keith and Steven Pridgen, who were reprimanded in 2008 under the University of Calgary’s student code of conduct for creating a Facebook group that the university says was defamatory towards Aruna Mitra, a former law instructor in the interdisciplinary department of communication and culture.
The students, who were placed on six months probation, took the case to Alberta’s Court of Queen’s Bench in the spring, arguing that the university violated their Charter right to free expression. On Wednesday, Justice Jo’Anne Strekaf agreed with that assertion. “I cannot accept that expression in the form of criticism of one’s professor must be restricted in order to accomplish the objective of maintaining an appropriate learning environment,” she wrote in her 39 page ruling.
At the Judicial review university lawyer, Kevin Barr reiterated U of C’s position that the comments were defamatory. “It is simply outrageous to suggest that the publication of defamatory statements by a student, directed at a professor over the Internet, does not amount to non-academic misconduct by any standard,” he said.
The Facebook group titled “I no longer fear Hell, I took a course with Aruna Mitra,” contained comments from at least 10 other students, one of whom compared Mitra to a shoe. Another comment said that Mitra “got lazy and gave everybody a 65.” Yet another alleged the instructor said that the Magna Carta was signed in 1700 when it was signed in 1215. After Mitra, who had discovered the Facebook page, informed the dean, the brothers were placed on probation. The university lifted the requirement that the students write an apology letter after they refused to do so.
What is precedent setting in the judgement is that Strekaf ruled that the U of C’s actions regarding discipline constitute government action, and, are therefore subject to Charter review. Universities have long held that their actions cannot attract Charter scrutiny because they are autonomous entities with their own decision making bodies. A 1990 Supreme Court case, involving a challenge to the University of Guelph’s mandatory retirement policy ruled that university decisions are not government decisions.
While Strekaf did not dispute that earlier judgment, at least when dealing with university staff, she added that because educating students constitutes a core government directed mandate, as outlined in Alberta’s Post-Secondary Learning Act, that policies related to dealing with students beyond day-to-day operations are subject to Charter scrutiny. While the U of C argued that its disciplinary policies were a part of independent contracts between students and the university, Strekaf argued that such policies cannot be clearly separated from the mandate of educating students.
She also stated that the students’ actions on Facebook constitute a part of the learning process. “The commentary may assist future students in course selection as well as provide feedback to existing students and perhaps reassurance that one is not alone in finding that they are having difficulty appreciating instruction in a particular course,” Strekaf wrote. Update: Though she did allow that some of the comments made on the page by the Pridgens may have “reflected a lack of maturity.”
The Calgary Herald quoted the students’ lawyer who was clearly excited. “Henceforth, the university should be a little slow to say the charter doesn’t apply to them,” he said.
The case could have implications for protest groups that have been denied access to university space, including a U of C pro-life club that has in the past been charged with trespassing for holding demonstrations on campus.
Laptops in the classroom
Facebook doesn’t belong in lecture halls
Are laptop-users ignoring their professors or just multitasking?
Facebook: The most vital of school supplies
I went from having a social network of one other journalism-defector to one that’s full of the people I’m going to be closest to for the next three years.
While driving from Calgary to Vancouver last week, I listened to an interview with Matt Richtel on NPR’s Fresh Air. Richtel is a New York Times journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize this year for his work on a series about the risks of texting while driving. In other words, he is a man who knows a lot about technology and its negative effects on our lives. He told Terry Gross that his favoured analogy for the relationship between humans and technology is to compare it to how we interact with food:
Just as food nourishes us and we need it for life, so too in the 21st century, in the modern age, we need technology. You cannot survive without the communications tools. The productivity tools are essential. And yet, food has pros and cons to it. We know that some food is Twinkies and some is Brussels sprouts. And we know that if we overeat, it causes problems.
Similarly, after, say, 20 years of glorifying all technology as if all computers were good and all use of it was good, I think science is beginning to embrace the idea that some technology is Twinkies, and some technology is Brussels sprouts.
This makes sense to me, because for the last week I was without the Internet (thanks to the ineptitude of an unnamed Canadian telecom giant who, I believe, must hate me personally) and it felt like I was starving. I’ve had a lot of time this week to think, usually while lying on my floor staring at the ceiling looking for shapes in the stucco, about which parts of the Internet I missed because I was bored and lonely, and which parts I missed because they’ve become integral to my life. It was fairly clear from the get-go that missing two (2) episodes of Jersey Shore on mtv.ca didn’t really have a tangible impact on my life, save for possibly the brief reflective moment where I felt sad about my own taste in entertainment.
If you asked me in August, I probably would have lumped Facebook in amongst the “Twinkies” side of technological-innovations-that-hurt-more-than-help, but this week has convinced me that, for students, Facebook cannot be lived without.
When I started journalism school, Facebook wasn’t a thing. It wasn’t even a gleam in then-Harvard-freshman Mark Zuckerberg’s eye. So, in September 2002, when I showed up to the first day of Journalism 1000, that was also the first day I met all my classmates. There was no other way for it to be, so that’s what we all would expected would happen, and that’s what did.
Fast forward eight years, and Facebook has so managed to entwine itself in the fabric of our lives that it and it alone is the reason that I know about 30 people in my law school class despite only knowing one of them personally two weeks ago.
In the six years since Facebook stampeded on to the public scene, people (or my generation, at least) have so rapidly evolved to accept it as a dominant form of communication that, without a single instance of outside prompting, 120 people sought out and joined a Facebook group called UVic Law 2013. This group has no official basis or purpose. Yet, almost every single person in our first-year class independently thought “Hey, I bet there’s a Facebook group for our law class this year. I should find it and join.”
And, during the week since I arrived in Victoria, there have been four separate social events organized solely through this Facebook group. And I didn’t have the Internet. If it weren’t for one longtime, much beloved analog friend of mine who is also attending UVic Law this year and who does have an Internet connection letting me know about all the different social gatherings, I would have been completely left out.
Which would have been awful. Anyone who’s read basically any other entries on this blog knows that I’m petrified to start school, and that feeling has only intensified since arriving in the city I will attend said school in. And you know who else feels scared? Every one of the other future law students I met in person this week, all of whom are not just nice but awesome. Making all these new friends has made all the difference between a week of agonizing fear and loneliness and a week that’s been incredibly fun. I went from having a social network of one other journalism-defector to one that’s full of the people I’m going to be closest to for the next three years.
I know that in a world without Facebook we just would have met at orientation, and friendships still would have been started and we all would have been fine. But this way, we’ve been allowed to meet up outside all of the pressures and stress of the first day of school and figuring out schedules and having to find time to meet up amongst the 300 to 500 weekly pages of reading we’ve been told we’ll get. And if that’s not a form of vital sustenance made possibly by technology, I don’t know what is.
