Facebook phenomenon

By: Michelle Anstett
Editor-in-chief

There is a phenomenon sweeping college campuses across the world, causing students to rediscover friends they have not seen in years, join groups involving common interests, find out about the latest events on campus and have another distraction from doing school work.

With over 10 million registered users on 40,000 high school, college, regional and work networks, it seems as if everyone is “Facebooking.” The site is the top social networking site aimed mainly at college students, and is first amongst photo-posting websites on the Internet. Whenever a person mentions a name not recognized by another, it is a safe bet that person will look up the unrecognized name on Facebook at a later time, trying to link a name with a face.

Created in 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg and a few others as a way of linking Harvard students by classes, Facebook has exploded in the past two years. When the site went public, it was only open to a few select college campuses, later opening up to all colleges. High school networks were then opened, along with work-related networks. Within the last few months, Facebook has opened to anyone with a valid e-mail address, opening the site to the wider world.

While the sheer amount of people on Facebook is large, the epidemic seems to have hit college students more than anyone else. These students, attempting to avoid their homework or to link up with friends they may have lost, can spend hours per day on the site.

This situation is no different on the Monmouth College campus, where nearly every one of the over 1300 students has a Facebook account. Students use it to keep up with one another and campus events, as well as creating blogs, a form of a diary kept electronically.

Junior Ellen Ehrenhart said, “I check my Facebook whenever I get on the computer to maybe check my e-mail or talk on AIM.” Erik Kammerer, also a junior, agreed, saying he checks his Facebook “right after I check my e-mail, which is about three to four times a day.”

There are several concerns which have come from school administrators, such as students checking Facebook while in class and a loss of communication as a result of another step in the information age.

Many students have been punished for things administrators have found on Facebook profiles, such as violations of alcohol policy, holding unauthorized parties and vandalism. A student at Miami University was arrested for posting a composite sketch of a rape suspect as his profile picture. Students who have created groups with messages of extreme hate, threats of violence against others or posing accusations against faculty members have been punished and, in some cases, expelled. One student at the University of Oklahoma was investigated by the United States Secret Service after he was reported for posting a joke on Facebook that President George Bush should be assassinated.

Students at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., created a party invitation on Facebook for a “cake party” in an attempt to entice campus police to search for alcohol violations.

Campus police showed up at the party, held in a dorm room, to not find alcohol, but instead just a whole lot of cake. Ashamed they had not found what they were led to believe by Facebook that they would find, the campus police cited a reported “noise violation” as the reason for their visit.

Recently, Facebook has caused some problems on the Monmouth College campus, as students claim to have been informed of the Turkey Bowl weekend party at the business house through a Facebook invitation. While the Facebook invitations can be a good thing, as they keep students apprised of campus events they may not know about otherwise, they can also lead to parties getting out of control, as more people know about a party than would have known without the help of Facebook.

Kammerer said he finds Facebook’s invitation feature a positive thing in his experience, as “I usually check to see how many people are attending the events that I am attending or have made up for ASAP (Association for Student Activities Programming).”

For all the negatives Facebook may present, there are also many positive aspects, such as the ability to network all over the world. It does not look as if Facebook is going anywhere, as it was ranked second in a study conducted by the Student Monitor, a limited liability company specializing in student market research based out of New Jersey. It tied with beer and lost only to the iPod.