ACUHO-I News Blog

Are you on Foursquare? Are your friends? Do you know the “mayor” of a nearby coffee shop or gym? Is this making any sense?

Foursquare is a social media app for smart phones. It creates a mashup of street maps with users’ comments about businesses and areas on the map. It also shows Foursquare members’ current locations, if they choose to display them. If a Foursquare user visits a place frequently enough, she is dubbed “mayor” of that spot. For example, the coffee shop might bear a note about the tasty scones sold there…or the dirty restroom. Notes on the gym might include a complaint about the annoying 5:30 p.m. rush hour crowd or the cute girl who works the front desk. College students have started tagging spots on their campuses as well, including the residence halls. This virtual “graffiti” worries some college and university administrators, who want to know what is being said about their institution or campus. Could a parent or potential student run across a note on Foursquare that turns him off of the institution? However, the notes might also be beneficial, communicating positives in a way that a website and tours of campus never could.

Since Foursquare’s users update the world on their locations and frequent destinations, it has the potential to become a security issue for individuals and institutions.

This creates some interesting questions for colleges and universities: What’s being said about us on Foursquare? Should we join the conversation? Would becoming involved in Foursquare be worth our time and money? Will Foursquare (or similar location-specifying apps) become a security issue?

What do you think?

URoomSurf is a web-based application that allows incoming college students to search for roommates. Instead of marketing their services to institutions, however, URoomSurf went straight to the students. They advertise their service on Facebook by creating groups for specific graduation years at an institution. Students join them, and URoomSurf will use this connection to draw the student to their roommate-matching website. The service is free; URoomSurf says they’ll make money with ads and, perhaps future premium services.

Some college and university administrators are annoyed by what they see as an end-run around the institutions that actually offer the rooms that roommates will share. URoomSurf’s pedigree isn’t helping the situation much. URoomSurf’s promoter, Justin Gaither, was involved in College Prowler, a similar service that also used Facebook as a marketing tool. In that case, College Prowler didn’t advise visitors to its Facebook page that they were not affiliated with any college or university, created “official” institution groups, and used official university logos, leading many students to believe that they were representing or working with their school. Brad Ward, now CEO of the higher education marketing company BlueFuego, pointed out this deception in late 2008. At the time, Ward was with Butler University’s admissions office.

Ward pointed out what he calls FacebookGate2010 on his blog, and the debate commenced. URoomSurf  isn’t trampling copyright laws the way they did last time; their pages now note their non-affiliation with any institution, though obliquely. However, some administrators are also annoyed that URoomSurf posted notices on their college’s official Facebook page, even after the institution asked them to cease. Of course, institutions fear that students, having found a “match” through URoomSurf will be dismayed when that match doesn’t happen in real life, either because of logistical issues, or because their institution has its own matching system. They think the service will establish false expectations, and that URoomSurf’s founders were unprofessional not to approach institutions with their idea and seek their partnerships. Several administrators quoted in the Inside HigherEd article make a point of saying URoomSurf’s product is a good idea, but the marketing of it and their adversarial stance toward institutions is off-putting. URoomSurf and its critics defend their points of view in this lengthy (and, um, circular) comment thread on Ward’s blog.

Have you dealt with URoomSurf or College Prowler? Do you have war stories or advice for your colleagues?

…of course, we’re all still talking about whether Facebook is dead, so perhaps it’s not. If you have strong feelings on the topic (or want to read the views of those who do) see this story on the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s website. Since we’ve all heard that Twitter isn’t of interest to the young folks, what’s coming up next? Telegrams? Letter-writing? Calling cards? Do you have any ideas?

Show of hands…when was the last time you sent a text message?

We all know that our students are now coming to campus better able to use technology to communicate. Everything from blogs to Twitter, texting, and smart phones.The feature in the recent Talking Stick by Richard Holeton The Net Generation on Campus & Online is a must read!

Students are coming to school owning cell phones at a 99 percent clip, and more and more of them are using smart phones…the Blackberry or iPhone. A higher percent of college students own and use a smart phone than working adults. Employers are at risk of falling behind the Net Generation in using and adapting to communications tools. A recent survey by Big Blue shows that from even these technologically advanced students, more than half feel they need to improve their technology skills before they graduate, and 80 percent expect to encounter new technology once they enter the workforce. As these students graduate and become professional employees, our institutions will need to consider getting our current employees, and ourselves, trained and armed with the current technology devices.As we tentatively dip our toes into the social networking world of Facebook and MySpace, the kids will be racing off to a brand-new, yet undiscovered technology (Twitter), leaving us looking and feeling both inadequate and confused. How will our employees view us if we don’t know the rudimentary basics of today’s communication technology? In order to compete with the private sector, we cannot rely on technology, software and communication tools from the 1980s.

(more…)

A selection of college housing and student affairs headlines from InsideHigherEd.com. Look for these on a weekly basis in the ACUHO-I news blog.

WHY NOT GO GREEK? Study analyzes why some undergraduates decide not to join fraternities and sororities, suggesting how student affairs officials might be able to help chapter recruitment and retention:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/01/greek

TRANS-ITION: A number of universities have expanded health care benefits in recent years to cover sexual reassignment surgery for transgender students and employees, a move some see as an obligation for institutions with nondiscrimination policies that cover the population:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/30/trans

REVOLT AGAINST OUTSOURCED COURSES: Students at small state university — discovering that their university awards credit for classes taught by online, for-profit company — set off debate on what college instruction should be:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/31/forthays

NEW STRATEGY AT WISCONSIN: Faced with revenue declines and dwindling faculty numbers, Madison may raise tuition on all but its neediest students, mirroring a model private institutions often employ:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/01/madison

FOLLOWING THE MONEY IN NEW MEXICO: Questions about administrative growth, use of resources, perceived corporatization, and shared governance are at root of faculty-administration conflicts:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/02/unm

Rukus, the free music downloading service promoted by the music industry as the way to limit illegal downloading by college students, has folded. Rukus abruptly halted services on February 6. An annonymous employee told The Chronicle of Higher Education that the business model, a downloading site funded by ads, was no longer working. Music industry representatives complained that students contributed to Rukus’ end by choosing other free, and illegal, downloading services instead. College officials said the restrictions on Rukus music–it couldn’t be transfered to a portable device or burned to a CD–made the service unattractive and unusable for students. They said these seemed to be strictures from another era, before digital downloading became commonplace.

Oddly, now that Rukus is gone, college and university officials are in a bind. The Higher Education Act, renewed by Congress last year, requires institutions to offer an “alternative” to illegal downloading. The langauge doesn’t make clear whether simply pointing students to iTunes or Amazon.com would fulfill this requirement, or if colleges and universities must be more aggressive, offering music services for their students. When the law was written, music industry officials suggested institutions contract with Rukus to fulfill this requirement, but this is no longer an option.

What institutions should do–or must do– to comply will be ironed out in the coming months. The Department of Education is begining the rule-making process now. If you would like to help shape any of the language in the Higher Education Act, contact the Public Policy Advisory Committee.

It’s like a decree issued by King Solomon: Wi-Fi or Beer? Obviously, most college students would beg not to make the choice, but if they had to, 48% would pick the Wi-Fi, according to a survey recently released by the clearly unbiased Wi-Fi Alliance and Wakefield Research. Wi-Fi improves their college performance, says 79% of students, though since more than half use WiFi to check Facebook, MySpace or other non-academic things in the classroom, this finding may not be entirely reliable. Sixty percent would not go to a school that doesn’t have free WiFi.

The University of Kentucky’s landlines in the residence halls will soon be going the way of the dodo, the Tasmanian wolf and calling cards. Students can still request a landline, but the university’s decision seems confirmed by the fact that only seven have done so. The university’s decision was made after a survey that showed more than 98% of students prefered to use their cell phones.

Have you pulled the plug on landlines? If so, what persuaded you to do so? If you haven’t, have you considered it?

Student Maciej Murakowski published an appallingly offensive web page of “jokes”–mostly about sex and at the expense of women–which offended and frightened some of his peers at the University of Delaware. He was suspended in the tension-threaded days after 32 people were killed at Virginia Tech, on April 19, 2007. The brother of a female student reported to campus police that his sister who lived in the same residence hall as Murakowski, had found his web page and was frightened.

Her fear doesn’t seem unfounded: Murakowski writes about an affection for black gloves, and a fantasy about choking someone while wearing them. He makes some pretty odd similes, saying gloves “make me feel menacing,” like OJ Simpson, not “the spindly pale virgin” he declares himself to be. Also on the page were meticulous instructions on how to skin a cat and jokes about rape, kidnapping and torture. (Sounds like a total laff fest, right?)

Murakowski and his lawyer, David Finger, sought damages. The original intent of the lawsuit was reinstatement, but the plodding pace of the legal system and time solved that problem: His one semester suspension expired and he completed his engineering degree. The university required he get a letter from a mental health professional certifying he was not a threat to himself or others before he returned to class, which he did. However, Murakowski was also told not to visit his residence hall during the suspension, but he did twice. He was also already on disciplinary probation at the time of the suspension, for a copyright violation. These things mitigated Judge Mary Pat Thynge’s judgment that his suspension was inappropriate and the web page was protected speech–albeit the kind of protected speech that isn’t attractive or substantial to most people, but protected all the same. Thynge found the university was justified for suspending Murakowski for his other transgressions. Thus, Murakowski was only awarded $10. (Most of which will probably go to his lawyer.)

As you can see on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s news blog, the case makes it hard for higher education officials to know how to differentiate between a justified suspension–because of a student’s seeming capacity for acts that harm himself or others–and an unnecessary intrusion into free speech. What do you make of it?

Some institutions, frustrated with the RIAA’s demands on their time and resources, are taking their student records and going home. So says a Chronicle of Higher Education article that reports some institutions are “fighting back” –passively–by not forwarding the RIAA’s prelitigation settlement letters (without an institution’s records, the RIAA doesn’t know which student is guilty of sharing) and automatically deleting network access logs regularly, as the institution can’t provide what it doesn’t have. A few have taken a more aggressive approach, by going to the courts.

The dissenting schools, and those who continue to cooperate with the RIAA’s demands, cite the money and human resources it takes to work with the RIAA, and the recording industry’s lack of reciprocity. The new College Opportunity and Affordability Act (Higher Education Reauthorization Act 2007) includes provisions that require schools “to the extent practicable” offer legal downloading alternatives;  explore anti-sharing technology; educate students about file-sharing and report on their efforts to the government. The recording industry’s lobbyists seem to have had something to do with this. Institutions, of course, feel this has become a rather one-sided friendship.

The RIAA, apparently not satisfied with a potiential law that may obligate institutions to buy its products, counters that the institutions’ previous compliance, and the continued cooperation of others, shows their requests don’t present an undue burden. After all, once you’ve run a gauntlet once, you’re happy to do it again and again!

How will your institution comply, if HERA 2007 is signed into law (it almost certainly will be)? How do you deal with piracy, downloading and RIAA requests now?