Subject: Re: Response to your voicemail re: The Facebook From: Tom Sherman Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 12:46:01 -0500 To: Michele Weldon Hi Michele, Thank you for the reply. First of all, as a former Northwestern student and the head of a student group, I know how the Daily can get things wrong. It's happened to my group many, many times. It's nothing new. If the Daily is at the pinnacle of college newspaper reporting, I don't want to be reading the rags scraping the bottom of the barrel. I can appreciate your concern for students, but I think you're failing to consider a couple of dimensions of the situation. Your examples of the Boeing CEO and the OU student are interesting and prove that online speech matters, but those are undeniably distinct cases from what we're dealing with here. The Boeing CEO is representing his company and is expected to act in a professional manner. It's against the law to threaten the president. I don't see a parallel to either condition here. The only students who may be under some burden to properly represent their university are athletes, and the culture (hopefully) fostered in a university is far different from the expectations laid down by a large defense contractor. You have a right to free speech. But as a professor, you also have an obligation to understand the power your speech carries, particularly when you do not allow the other side adequate time to be heard. From the reactions of Medill freshmen following the "forum"--and that may be an inaccurate term for the meeting-- about the Facebook, the students were not given adequate time to respond to a situation that centers squarely on them and their conduct. They were lectured to. As to the specific comments you allude to in my blog entry--"panties in a bunch" and "spring fling"-- I suppose I can understand how you could be offended by these terms, but I don't deem them generally offensive. I had several folks read my entry, from my age up to people in their 40s, and no one thought it was out-of-line. The purpose of my "spring fling" comment was to drive home the point that professors should leave students be on the Facebook. What are you really doing on there, anyway? Spying? And if you feel that a doomsday scenario such as professor suicide or Columbine II is really a potential repercussion of Facebook comments, I'd leave the monitoring of the site to the law enforcement professionals. The "panties in a bunch" comment is not offensive. It's a slang phrase. If you're looking for its meaning, see the Urban Dictionary: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term= panties+in+a+bunch&r=f I truly believe that we're working with a generation gap here. You're interpreting my comments as offensive; they're not, and they definitely weren't intended as "personal." You're seeing "personal attacks" in others' words as well. I think you're failing to view these comments from the context in which they were made and from the viewpoint of the speaker. What's offensive to you as recipient is not necessarily generally offensive and certainly cannot be deemed to be intentionally offensive by the speaker. I will answer your questions about my family and yours. My mother and father regularly read my blog (every day, I believe). I certainly did not receive any rebuke from them following my entry. They are part of your generation, and despite the fact that I doubt they'd write such a thing themselves, they are able to read my words with my generation and patterns of speech in mind. If my mother was being described in the fashion I've described on my blog, I wouldn't be mad; but in a scenario where I was mad, I wouldn't demand that the entry be taken down or edited--I'd argue with the author right on the blog. Lastly, you infer that I don't (or didn't?) mean to upset your kids. Of course I don't. I don't know how old they are, but if they're impressionable, they shouldn't be reading my blog! Regards, Tom