[Ilya Somin, August 22, 2008 at 5:21pm] Trackbacks
Lawprofs on Facebook:

At the Legal Innovation blog, Harvard Law School fellow Gene Koo notes the phenomenon of lawprofs getting their own Facebook profiles and asks:

how you use Facebook or social networking in general for the classroom. What do you hope to accomplish by being on Facebook? Do you have a policy for friending your students? Does even the concept of "friending" raise concerns about the appropriate relationship you should have with your students? What unique issues have arisen as a result of Facebook friending? (Did you have to go and remove all of your drunken party pics from back when?)

Well, I'm one of the culprits here, having started my very own facebook profile last year. I didn't think it was such a big deal. However, the main objectives were just to get a little more exposure for myself and my work, and to reconnect with old acquaintances. As for "friending" students, I don't think that a formal policy is really necessary. Just about anyone familiar with the site recognizes that a Facebook "friendship" is not a close intimate relationship, and doesn't create any conflicts of interest. So far, there haven't been any "unique issues" and I don't expect any to come up anytime soon. But for what it's worth, my "policy" is that I accept "friend" requests from students, just like I accept them from many other casual acquiantances.

As for drunken party pics, if any such exist (I'm certainly not admitting that they do), they certainly won't be found on my Facebook profile! That "policy" would apply even if I weren't a professor.

Eric Muller (www):
We lawprofs seriously need to lighten up.

Facebook is mostly pleasant silliness, and a chance to connect with faces from the past. I say: enough of the "exposure for our work" already!
8.22.2008 10:33pm
theobromophile (www):
Well, some of the line-crossing may be due to the fact that you would be seeing their drunken party pictures. (Of course, one could always avert his eyes....)

Professors may prefer to maintain the pleasant fiction that their students spend Friday nights hard at work in the bowels of the library (or, at the worst, reading the Volokh Conspiracy), not doing keg stands while attired in togas.

Even if you are not Facebook friends with your students, you can see their profiles (unless they have enabled the rarely-used security features). Also, with the "tagging" feature, one need not to have posted the hypothetical drunken party pictures in order to have them show up on Facebook - that's what friends are for.
8.23.2008 2:13am
ArtEclectic (mail):
Social Networking causes a lot of angst for adults. I find people are either in the A) what the hell, why not? or B) over my dead body camp. I know a lot of people, myself included, who have real problems with the idea of exposing so much personal information on Social Networking sites. I'll happily join and use Linkedin, which is a professional/business networking site but under no circumstances will I be putting information about my personal life onto any social site. Other people obviously feel differently and are more comfortable with the idea.
8.23.2008 2:14am
Kenneth Anderson (mail) (www):
I have a facebook page, which has on it extended family - my nieces and nephews and brothers and sisters - friends and colleagues from many professional circles, but is open to students. I don't advertise it to current students, although I'm perfectly happy to have them friend me and join - but the real reason is that I am a very, very active Blackboard user and facebook has no advantages to me for that for current law students at my school. No, the real reason I have it for students is actually for former students, for social reasons - they are out in the real world, they get married, they change jobs, they have kids, whatever - and because they sometimes need letters of rec, career advice, things like that. Law students become remarkably staid once out in the real world, as far as I can tell from facebook. About as staid as me - the personal information is pretty darn dull. "Kenneth is writing about the UN." Hmm. The only solid social rule about facebook that I know ... my 15 year old daughter has Forbidden Me to Friend Her Under Any Circumstances.
8.23.2008 11:10pm
Jeremy Pierce (mail) (www):
I've got the same policy. I don't seek out my students to add them as friends, but I accept friend invitations from students and former students. I usually have about 50 students per semester and maybe 10-20 each summer. I'd guess that maybe 75-80% of them have Facebook accounts. I usually check all the names at the beginning of the semester so I can have the picture to go with the name to make it easier to learn their names. Even the ones with security features usually have pictures that are accessible to the general public (although I disagree with theobromophile about it being rarely-used; I suspect about 40% of my students on Facebook have the security feature enabled). I believe only three have added me as a Facebook friend while attending my class in the four semesters that I've had Facebook. So it hasn't been a large number. If I advertized my Facebook account, the numbers would probably be larger, but they might not be a lot larger.
8.24.2008 4:16pm