Can you publish any public information about an alumnus in the form of a class note?
An acquaintance recently said he was "mortified" that his alma mater had found some information about him online (probably in another organization's newsletter), and then re-purposed it as class news in the Alumni Notes.
My first thought was, "So what?" If you publish an article, win an award, or keynote a conference, people are going to talk about it, and it will likely be published on someone's website. And if it's on a public site, it will be indexed by Google and will be searchable. Or it will turn up on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, without breaching any privacy policy or Terms of Service.
My acquaintance explains that "including that note implies that I wrote that in to the office and volunteered that information to be published in those pages." The point, he said, is not whether the information is public – it's whether he would want it broadcast to his alumni community. The answer to that is impossible for the alumni office to know, without asking him.
["It implies that I volunteered that information
to be published in those pages"]
Does your institution have a policy for this? Is it easy for alumni to find and understand that policy? Do you get complaints from alumni whose news you collected elsewhere and re-published (either in print or online)?
I posed this question on the Alumni Futures Facebook page, where one reader described a combination of approaches:
[We use] news submitted by alumni, news submitted by their employers (usually about promotions, awards, etc.), and news from stories in the press that mention the alumnus/alumna and his or her affiliation with the university.
Another reader said:
The major caveat is that the alumnus/subject must verify and approve before printing.
What's your view?
Leave a comment.
Image by Sean MacEntee via Creative Commons.