MySpace is a place where people of any age can mingle, exchange ideas and meet new friends. Yet in our ever-changing world, what we post may affect our lives in ways we could never foresee.
Right now, employers can look at MySpace profiles to see if the people they’re debating whether to hire fit their company’s image. Now the idea of checking MySpace is spreading to universities.
Last weekend, I was watching Fox News and learned that a student was going to have her degree taken away from her because of her MySpace page. The reason her degree was being revoked was related to a certain photo she had posted.
Stacy Snyder, a senior attending Millersville University in Pennsylvania, had posted a picture of herself at a Halloween party in 2005 titled “Drunken Pirate.”
According to an Associated Press story, professor J. Barry Girvin, who supervised Synder’s work, wrote, “There were errors in judgment that relate to Pennsylvania’s Code of Professional Practice and Conduct for Educators.” Now Snyder is suing the school.
However, Snyder is not the only student who is facing problems with posting on MySpace. At Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas, students have been banned on campus from using MySpace because the Internet there has been slow, and MySpace use was affecting the bandwidth on the campus server. But what bothers me is that if the universities look into MySpace, then other seniors may fall into Snyder’s place.
Universities should not be looking into MySpace to see what students post. If they do, then they might as well take away everyone’s degree for anything that they believe is indecent.
Many college students post pictures that are far worse than themselves with a beer in their hand. What universities need to do is pay attention to the person in the classroom, not the person on MySpace.
Universities need to realize that MySpace is just a Web site, and that is not reason enough to take back a degree that someone has worked hard to get.
I believe that MySpace should be monitored when it comes to children and young adults. But as for people who are over the age of 18, the site is a place where they can communicate with their long lost friends and make new ones.
In the end, I just hope other seniors who are going to be graduating don’t fall under the same trap.
Julie Sparkhul is a junior journalism major and the calendar editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.
