Responsible Social Networking on Campus

Responsible Social Networking
Campus gossip websites were ideally intended to be used as a way to communicate with students and engage with peers in useful ways. I feel that campus gossip websites are being used unethically. Currently, Campus gossip websites are just now being utilized to start rumors and anonymously publicly bash fellow students without ramifications from school and related officials. In turn, the students have gone to new extremes with malicious comments towards fellow peers and in some cases, causing physical and emotional damage with no clarity on who all should be held liable. A waste of time and energy is spent by students anonymously involving themselves in these gossip websites who knowingly hold such power to destroy a fellow peer and yet people still use them in all the wrong ways.

It is completely unethical to post a rumor about another individual on a campus gossip website. There are standards that every person should hold themselves to and in return be able to treat one another as you would like to be treated. College should not be a place where students are more concerned about social statuses and stressed about being publicly humiliated by peers because of one person’s post on a campus gossip website. Cruel, hurtful comments tend to follow, making campus life for the targeted individual agonizing. Ethical conduct should be carried out day to day, through out every aspect, even when socially it can be easy to stray if you are constantly subjected or surrounded around peers who chose not to. It still gives no excuse to contribute to gossips websites. It’s simple, know right from wrong and conduct yourself in that manner, posting rumors on gossip websites results in nothing but unethical.

If I were to read about myself in a posting on a gossip site of course, I would first feel the need to defend myself. Depending on the severity of the information that was posted, I know my first thought would be who did this and what this person’s intent behind doing so. The thought of having someone have such a negative opinion about you is very depressing. Everyone always wants nothing but positive things to be said when your name is mentioned. My train of thought would be to fight back, say something in response to let this person and everyone else know that what’s being said is nothing but someone’s personal attack for some unknown reason to publicly degrade me. My actions, on the other hand, would not reflect any of that. I have been in situations where I have read some harsh critics opinions and peers personal thoughts of what they thought of me and/or current status socially and acted on my first defensive thought strategy. The result never ended where my first intentions wanted to. Looking back after taking the time to calm down, reading both of our comments, I realized that I made myself look just as unethical as the person posting about me. I was getting drawn in, feeling like I had to respond back by using personal attacks to feel justified. Not responding and by not contributing in any form is what needed to be done. Of course, my feelings would be dishearten but overall I would know what I did was right by not having to be unethical as a form to feeling justified to prove them wrong.

As of right now, schools administrators and even federal law cannot fully regulate or hold certain parties responsible who are at fault for these campus gossip websites. Ethically, of course this is not right. We are taught as children, that there are consequences for our bad choices. There are laws that we are to follow and if we do not, you will be held accountable and punished. So how is it that so many people have been hurt and suffered some mental distress and in some cases unfortunately, physical harm and damage? As discussed in* a case raised question whether colleges should be obligated to intervene when one of their students are targeted on a gossip website. A very concerned mother addressed an issue with the Dean at the University where her daughter attended because some explicit names where posted on a campus gossip website under her name. After the Mother was told nothing could be done by the University to block or remove the comments, she then decided to file a complaint with the U.S Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights stating the University was required to take action under Title IX, Federal Gender-Equity Law arguing that it interfered with her daughter’s ability to learn. After they reviewed the case, they ruled that because the comments were posted anonymously and not able to be proved students, and because the Mother did not identify her daughter by name to the University so they could properly investigate further, nothing was done. Certain steps needed to be followed like the daughter reporting the conduct to the campus police. Her representation stated it was not all a loss. The Department’s willingness to consider the complaint means that gossip websites fall under Title IX guidelines meaning in turn, more questions would have to be answered and hopefully, long term, Law and Regulations can be better stated and put into place.* Something needs to be done to hold certain parties responsible. So it is unethical that nothing is being done to stop this ongoing issue that has hindered many students.

Sadly enough, cyber bullying and gossip websites has become severe enough to be lead to rape, murder and suicides. As talked about in*(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/tyler_clementi/index.html) a Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi committed suicide after his roommate decided to live stream his intimate encounter broadcasting on twitter encouraging to watch and revealing to everyone that he was gay. He then was ridiculed as he turned into the dorm’s gossip. Tyler, a very quiet, reserved young man never spoke of his sexual orientation so you can imagine the extreme distress and humiliation that followed and unfortunately, 3 days later he decided to jump off the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River in an apparent suicide. There were 2 people charged in this case and in my own personal opinion, lightly and not even in relation to the suicide but more along the lines invasion of privacy. The case questioned Hate crime due to the sexual orientation and his roommate exploiting Tyler, prosecutors stating that his roommate was homophobic. There are many more cases like this maybe some not as extreme but how is it that people are getting no ramifications, no punishment what so ever for their mean attempt to harass, mortify and viciously attack peers leading to crimes in due result of anonymously posting on a gossip website. In this case Tyler’s was documented and more publicly noted by his roommate making charges easier but still not enough in regards to cyber bullying and being held accountable and who all should be punished. Responsibility to crimes in due result of a posting on a gossip website first and foremost the person responsible doing the act needs to be held accountable, the victims school if proper steps were not taken by the victim to notify proper officials to try to prevent the crime, and the website host should also be held accountable for letting people post such things that could in turn, lead to something as severe as a crime as a result of. Postings should be monitored and everyone should be under certain guidelines for this reason of crimes taking place.

As Technology advances, we have to be constantly changing, learning and adapting to be able to communicate anywhere we go. To be able to attend College, it is almost impossible to be able to be successful without a computer, cell phone and internet. Having such access to information, constantly online talking with peers and other social outlets has become the majority of communication. In today’s culture, people spend more time on a computer than anything else and as technology advances, everyone feels urged to keep up with it due to its improvements to make day to day tasks as simple as possible, instant gratification to any task at hand. This influences our culture in many ways but in the case of how it affects the overall scheme of campus gossip websites, you can only imagine how easy it is to access this information and how easy it is instantly post. I think technology advances are meant for much more then to able to get on Facebook and post what you had for lunch but having such easy access to this gives campus peers way to gossip more freely. Word of mouth takes much longer as to posting online where you know it’s going to be seen in a matter of seconds.

In conclusion, campus gossip websites are unethical. Posting rumors, spreading lies regardless of your personal opinion about someone, in no way shape or form, is going to accomplish anything positive for either person involved. Having to find any information about yourself is upsetting enough but to have to deal with it on a daily basis where more concern should be about education, not about being ridiculed or embarrassed by what someone post stated. Standards and laws need to be put in place to better protect students from being put in the situation where cyber bullying and posting anonymously goes unpunished by holding schools, the posting party and web host.