Ball State University officials released on Tuesday a new social media policy which includes conduct guidelines for posting on Web sites including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Myspace.
According to this set of rules, university and student employees should follow the same expectations and respectful behavior that they would outside of the online world, especially when posting for an official department or unit. Not surprisingly, employees are liable for anything they might post on any of these Web sites.
Some of the rules are insulting to the professionalism of employees because they are simply common sense. Any person who wants to keep their job would know better than to post student information or copyrighted work.
As a state-funded university, which acts as an arm of the government, it's slightly perplexing how freedom of speech can be regulated in this way. The reason we have the First Amendment is to protect from government infringement. Does a social media policy - spelling out what is acceptable and what isn't - count as infringement?
Or could this be another 'smoking ban,' which isn't seriously enforced? Is there even any way to regulate what employees post without having a person designated to monitor every single status update? The only way the policy might be used is if someone complains about something a professor or staff member posted. Or you end up with a new hire in a Big Brother-type position, monitoring Twitter and YouTube non-stop.
A main gray area of this policy is the request for employees to link friends and readers back to Ball State's Web site for news releases, 'instead of to a publication or other media outlet.' Essentially, our school wants all of its employees to perform free marketing and PR whenever possible. Perhaps Ball State wants to save money on these functions - or fire some people who perform these duties - by getting the job done for free.
These types of policies are becoming more and more common across America, and most of this one seems fairly standard.
However, what is the real need for a policy such as this? Many of the guidelines are overly vague, which probably leaves the university open to interpret them in a way that might aid Ball State should any problems arise with an employee in the future.
With a $15.25 million slash to the university budget for the next year and a half, shouldn't time and effort be spent on more pressing issues than a silly, vague policy that will probably be ignored?
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