Students applying to medical or business schools also should be wary, as 14 and 9 percent of admissions officers, respectively, will check their social networking pages. This means that some undergraduates at BC who plan to apply to different graduate schools in the next few years could have their applications skewed by Facebook photos of their weekend parties.
John Mahoney, director of admissions at Boston College, said that BC does not use Facebook or MySpace in the evaluation of applications. "Given the volume of applications we receive and the complexity of our review process, we simply would not have time to do this. We also feel it is important to use the credentials that we actually require of students in making our decisions," he said. "We are admission professionals, not private detectives."
Mahoney said that the only exception to this policy would be if the University learned about objectionable information being displayed by a candidate on one of these social networking sites. "In that case, we would be obligated to investigate a site if a candidate posed a threat to our community," Mahoney said.
The use of Facebook and MySpace can lead to legal dangers in college as well. While students can control access to their profiles, Facebook's privacy policy specifies that these limits do not apply to lawful requests, which include subpoenas and court orders. In October 2006, police at Penn State University used a Facebook group called "I Rushed the Field After the OSU Game" to charge two students with criminal trespassing. A Facebook group's creator was held responsible at Michigan State University in 2007 for the start of a riot at the Cedar Village Housing Complex. In October of last year, charges were brought against 15 Alexander Hall residents at George Mason University based on photos posted on Facebook that showed underage drinking. Pictures from Facebook were also used to cite violators of the university alcohol policy at North Carolina State University in October 2005, and charges included underage drinking and violations of the residence hall alcohol policy.
While currently BC does not use Facebook or MySpace to research what goes on in the residential areas, students should still be cautious about what they put on their personal pages and groups, as they may be legally responsible for the content. Though the majority of admissions officers for undergraduate and graduate schools do not use these tools for reviewing a candidate, far greater numbers of companies than before are using these social utilities to judge their possible employees.
Spring Break
