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)?
[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.
One of the best things about blogging is the thoughtful and provocative replies from attentive readers. This kind of engagement keeps me on my toes and, I believe, informs other readers.
Here are five of the many comments that readers left this year. I selected them because they illuminate larger issues in advancement, while addressing a specific, narrower topic. This gives them both tactical and strategic value.
I hope they spur your own thinking about some of the issues. Note: I've edited the comments for length in a few spots.:
In the alumni relations profession we tend to compartmentalize our constituents based on demographics versus psychographics. This mistakenly focuses on who is in the database instead of why people might want to stay connected. Any tool which can help you deepen the relationships between the institution and the alumni should be embraced. Yes, as alumni professionals, we manage relationships or what I prefer to describe as facilitate meaningful connections.
In reply to the same article about CRM, Andrew Gossen said:
I agree with...the goal of having the user experience of transition from student to alumni be as seamless as possible. A significant impediment to this is often not insularity, lack of creativity, or absence of good intention but the long shadow of FERPA. The most elegant and user-friendly system in the world isn't going to help you any if you've got people in your institution arguing that any and all data relating to any aspect of what an individual did as a student is off limits because of FERPA. Sadly, many American institutions seem more worried about CYA than positive, integrated relationship management.
[Keith Lue: We mistakenly focus on who is in the database instead of why people might want to stay connected]
One of many challenges of brand-building for a university system has to do with creating coherence for the "system" brand among its many distinct campuses. The bigger the system, the more challenging that is....What is the purpose of the system brand as opposed to the campus brand(s)? Maybe the system is the superbrand, a la Procter & Gamble, and the individual campuses a brand unto themselves (a la Tide, Crest, Charmin, Bounty, Luvs and the other various brands that are part of the P&G house). So, yes, universities do have a consumer positioning strategy. But when I'm buying toothpaste, I'm not buying Procter & Gamble. I'm buying Crest or one of its competitors. In the same way, consumers of education aren't buying the superbrand of a system. Not if there is differentiation among their various campuses...
...Negative comments received via social media provide a unique opportunity to change attitudes/perceptions. If people post a "negative" comment on a photo or lodge a complaint on Twitter/Facebook take the time to respond and counter that assumption, if appropriate, or admit it's an area for improvement. In my experience this type of candor is appreciated. Either way, negative responses provide an opportunity to learn something new, and perhaps win over a naysayer in the process.
[John Feudo: Alumni Relations is not the end in itself – it's the means to an end]
One of the issues many alumni associations struggle with is why we exist. It's all too easy to focus on what is best for the alumni association, and not on what is best for the institution. Alumni Relations is not the end in itself – it's the means to an end. The "end" should be the complete and total investment of our alumni in their alma mater.
That wraps up 2011. Many thanks to the readers of Alumni Futures, followers on Twitter, and Facebook fans.
I look forward to 2012 and a new crop of insights, reactions and ideas from my readers!
The Problem In a recent email exchange, a colleague raised questions about what may be a growing problem within LinkedIn, the online business networking platform: fraudulent profiles. He showed how a specific user had crafted a phony LinkedIn profile, then used it to establish connections with hundreds of legitimate LinkedIn users.
My colleague backed up his claim with several observations:
"It is highly likely that the entire profile is fake.
A Google search results in zero hits for his name. The list of elite employers (Goldman, McKinsey, BCG, Booz, etc.) in his LinkedIn profile is not only preposterous, there's no record he ever worked at the firm where I worked. Yesterday he listed 15 months as an "analyst," which does not exist as a role/title at that company. Today he shows 3 months as an intern there. Never mind the myriad typos in the names of companies he allegedly worked for."
Why is this a problem? Because many LinkedIn members (mistakenly) believe that a bigger network is always better, and are eager to add names to their Connections list. If someone says he was an intern at a firm where you once worked, then shouldn't you connect with him?
Yes. But only if the credentials are real.
The Value Play by LinkedIn Like Facebook, LinkedIn is aggregating a massive amount of information about its members' networks, interests, and behavior. This has tremendous value for advertisers and potential buyers or investors. So the long-term effect of passively encouraging fraudulent behavior includes erosion of the network's value. A phony user can lift the email address from the profile of any first-degree connection. The "good" citizens of LinkedIn will have their networks usurped for fraud, or at least for spamming purposes, harming the enterprise as a whole.
As a company with ambitions to go public or be bought, LinkedIn must ensure the greatest possible value for its members' profiles, their connections, and their network behavior. It is not in LinkedIn's interest to hunt down people with phony high-end credentials – quite the opposite. A network with these credentials in it is more valuable to them – so long as the credentials may be real. Besides, hunting down phonies is a high-overhead activity for the site's managers.
In fact, it's probably better to let network members themselves report others whose credentials they suspect, or whom they believe to be violating the Terms of Service. But that reveals another problem.
How to Report Fraudulent Profiles LinkedIn makes it very difficult to report fraudulent behavior. Scroll to the very bottom of a LinkedIn profile page and click "Customer Service," and you can search for help on a topic. Type in "Abuse" to obtain search results that require you to click again, until you can finally learn that LinkedIn "takes these matters very seriously." Then you have the opportunity to click once more, so you may fill out a generic form for asking a question. Image below shows LinkedIn's abuse reporting mechanism.
What to Do? Network Strategically A social network's integrity is as strong as the weakest link it contains. When a LinkedIn user connects to someone he doesn't know personally and whose work he cannot vouch for, the entire network is weakened and potentially at risk. Community policing of the network requires everyone to adhere to relatively conservative rules about connecting.
This is strategic networking: seeking and establishing connections that you can trust, with people whose own networks may be valuable to you.
Notably, there is an entire movement with an opposing philosophy, so-called "open-networking" (identifiable in some cases by the acronym LION in a profile: "LinkedIn Open Networker." This approach may be useful in some cases to sales people and some job seekers, but I never knowingly connect to open networkers).
So, with these issues in mind, what can one do? Here are two simple alternatives:
Choose not to use LinkedIn This is actually reasonable for the vast majority of business people. But increasingly (for better or worse), people believe that having a LinkedIn profile is the mark of a "serious professional," so there is a possible adverse side-effect from refusing to participate in the site.
Connect only with individuals whose work you can vouch for directly This conservative approach supports the highest long-term value for your social capital. If you want your network to be reliable, fill it with people you trust.
This isn't network science, it's common sense.
What do you think about this issue? A non-problem? A minor inconvenience? A threat to online trust? Or something else? Leave a comment, and if you're a fan of open networking, tell us why.
Note: This blog posting probably violates LinkedIn Terms of Service item 10.B.10, because I deep-linked to a page other than LinkedIn's home page. I'll take the links out if they ask me to, but I'm doing it to educate LinkedIn users so the company's product is more likely to be used in the way it was intended to be used.
Once again, I've updated the matrix of Social Networks' Impacts on Alumni Organizations. This collections of ways in which alumni organizations can use online social platforms now lists 20 different cases.
The primary purpose is to help you spur creative thinking about how to use online networks to help your institution achieve its mission. It can also serve as a management checklist, to see how you are doing overall. And you can use it as a road map when crafting the online components for your alumni communications strategy (you have that, right?).
The updated matrix adds two additional uses for social networks:
1. Conduct alumni prospect research Cornell's Andrew Gossen recently analyzed the pros and cons of using graduates' social network profiles for prospect research. While each service has its own characteristics, the most important thing to understand about all these platforms (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and others) is that the ethical and legal landscape is murky. Proceed with extreme caution, and in the company of legal and research experts before collecting alumni data from individuals' online profiles.
2. Manage crisis communications This addition was spurred by further conversation with Reed College's Mike Teskey. Mike and his colleague Robin Tovey blogged here last August about their own experiences in this realm, and you can read their original article for Alumni Futures to understand some of the specifics.
Leave a comment with your own observations and additions to the matrix. Or email me: [email protected].
Note: The matrix is designed to print on US legal size paper, 8.5 x 14 inches.
* If you are reading this message via email or RSS and cannot download the 20 Use Cases,
[Updated: with link to blog post about "why crisis management and social media must co-exist," and interview with Cindy Lawson. See resource list at bottom of posting.]
How can engaging alumni through social media and email help an institution during a media crisis? The alumni & parent relations staff at Reed College believes that doing so is beneficial, perhaps integral.
This article was written by Mike Teskey, director of alumni & parent relations at Reed College in Portland, OR (USA), and Robin Tovey, Reed's assistant director of alumni & parent relations.
This past spring, two Reed College students died. While the circumstances of the deaths differed from one another, the college found itself the focus of local, then national media attention. The story had numerous twists and turns, and lasted for several news cycles.
Background
During spring break, 2010, a student was found dead in her dorm. The coroner did not immediately list a cause of death, but ruled out illegal drugs or alcohol.
Shortly after spring break ended, a student living off campus died of an accidental heroin overdose.
Prior to the annual year-end student party (known as Renn Fayre), Reed College president Colin Diver was called into a meeting by the County district attorney and the U.S. attorney for Oregon, and was told that undercover law enforcement agents would likely be present at the upcoming party.
The first death generated local news coverage. The second death resulted in local as well as national attention. The action of the U.S. attorney and the County DA created national headlines (see links at the end of this article).
Commentary There are many nuances and additional elements to this story, but here we're focusing on the role of social media and alumni relations in the crisis-communication process.
We believe that informing alumni promptly through email, Facebook, and Twitter and getting ahead of the mainstream news media aided the college in managing the message and the public discourse online.
Key elements included:
Access to Information: In situations like ours, what is known and what can be shared are often different. Student privacy is paramount, and the college cannot (appear to) be insensitive to this. Still, as soon as a death occurs and the coroner is called, it becomes a public story. And as soon as the public relations staff become involved, the alumni relations team needs to be brought in to help disseminate information.
Delegation: It can be challenging when, in the institution at large, there is a lack of consensus about how to respond to the crisis, along with widely divergent levels of comfort with digital communications. In a small college, no single office is equipped to handle all the related issues, so the alumni office must be empowered to share information (with appropriate approvals) and respond to alumni questions.
Empowerment: By the same token, it helps to empower the alumni as well, arming them with invaluable information to use in their own conversations with others. Our alumni added salient comments to the online mix, becoming our best advocates, and we believe they benefited from having the full spectrum of documentation available via our news feed.
Timeliness: Getting ahead of the news cycle is hard, but sharing information promptly engenders good will, provides context, and creates an "information posse" that can work to your favor when the inevitable online comments appear following a story.
Persistent monitoring: As the stories are posted and reposted, it is important to monitor what is said and, to the extent possible, who is saying it. It was quite validating to see loyal alumni chiming in and sharing a perspective that staff cannot offer. In fact, the most popular link we reposted was a letter from two young alumnae to the New York Times, that served as an astute rebuttal to an earlier article.
From the first publication through the last related posting from us, this crisis communications effort occupied nearly four weeks. It was rewarding to know, to arm, to answer, and finally to trust our alumni audience, so that they could engage others and be the institution's best advocates in the larger community – online, as well as face to face.
Paul Prewitt asked recently whether the membership dues-based association model is hurting alumni organizations, instead of helping them. Having recently stepped down from the leadership of a membership association, I exchanged some ideas with him via email. I've boiled down my thoughts to some simple pros and cons of the various association membership models.
The two alumni-centric models I mention here are
The Membership Dues Model: Alumni choose to pay annual or life member dues, in exchange for a set of benefits and privileges not available to non-members.
The Inclusive Model: All alumni have equal access to the same set of programs and services provided by alma mater via the alumni office.
There is also a fundraising-focused offshoot of this:
The Donor Benefits Model: Individuals (including non-alumni) who donate at least a specified amount of money to the institution receive exclusive benefits for their contribution.
Some Advantages of the Membership Dues Model
Generates revenue in the form of dues.
Life dues can be placed into endowment for 1) growth and 2) long-term higher return (life members pass away and no longer use benefits, but the association retains and reinvests their dues).
Helps you identify who really is a more active than passive supporter (ie, they bothered to join, which is a form of engagement).
Members feel privileged to some extent ("first class citizen").
Places the school in front of constituents through cyclical marketing and renewal process.
Some Disadvantages of the Membership Dues Model
Members may think that they are donating to the institution when they join an autonomous ("independent") alumni association.
There's overhead associated with maintaining dues programs (benefits administration, renewals, payment processing, marketing) so, generally, only larger organizations can justify the relative opportunity cost. Most small shops will do better to allocate their membership management position to events or programs instead.
Non-members resent the paying for things they think should be free (e.g., library access, publications, discounts, merchandise...).
Marketing can leave non-joiners with a negative feeling toward the institution.
The primary alternative to due-based associations are so-called "inclusive associations," where all alumni automatically are welcome to participate in activities without regard to having actively joined an association or other alumni organization.
Some Advantages of the Inclusive Model
Saves on overhead of marketing and administering a separate membership and benefits program.
Reduced marketing and sales aspect to alumni relations.
Helps creates the impression that the association has something of relevance to all alumni.
Some Disadvantages of the Inclusive Model
Alumni are not aware of the alumni association (or, they're not aware of their "membership" in it).
All benefits potentially accrue to all alumni, which is a cost ineffective way to model service and product delivery.
Removes a potentially significant revenue stream from the balance sheet.
In our brief exchange, Paul also mentioned an off-shoot of the dues model, the Donor Benefits Model. This is a system where benefits accrue to individuals who contribute to the institution above a specified financial threshold.
Some Advantages of the Donor Benefits Model
Allows you to identify, cultivate, steward and reward those who support the institution financially.
Helps identify prospects for future giving, increased giving, and more diversified giving.
Can generate attention and gifts from people who otherwise wouldn't bother (for example, they like having access to the institution's president or senior administrators and professors).
Creates a framework for "more equal than others" outreach, which reinforces the culture of giving at higher levels (e.g., travel programs for President's Circle).
Some Disadvantages of the Donor Benefits Model
Alienates people who feel their non-financial contributions (e.g., career expertise, volunteer time at events, service on boards) is not valued at same level or in the same way as financial donations.
Reinforces stereotype that only people who give money are "important" to the school.
Distracts people from seeing relative value of volunteerism, and may discourage people from engaging non-financially.
Additional Thoughts
I think that many alumni offices tend to program for a mythical average alumnus who, all things being equal, is 1) interested in alma mater, 2) prepared to engage or join, and 3) willing to donate.
But there is no such thing as the "average alumnus." The fact is that the vast majority of alumni 1) don't have an active interest in the school, 2) don't join local or comprehensive alumni groups, and 3) don't contribute financially.
Some associations are already programming more for the minority of alumni who are predisposed toward engagement, while largely ignoring the rest of the constituents. Of course, there will be periodic efforts to attract newly-interested or available alumni as volunteers and donors as well, but alumni who have exhibited low or no engagement over some length of time will be dropped from mailing and invitation lists.
Bottom Line
Dues-based associations are not "bad" for alumni relations. So long as an association has the scale to justify the overhead cost, dues structures are still justified. But to thrive, membership associations must deliver real benefits that people truly need or want, and that they cannot get elsewhere.
Photo of a members only chair at the Royal & Ancient Golf Club, St. Andrews, Scotland, from Flickr member Son of Groucho via Creative Commons.
Last week the popular Huffington Post initiated a campaign urging readers to have their college and university alumni associations disclose their affinity credit card agreements. HuffPo, as it is known, mentioned that the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 requires these groups to explain certain aspects of their card contracts.
Huffington also provided a sample letter, and instructions for how to be "polite but persistent" in your query to the university or its alumni group.
As a follow up, CASE's Director of Government Relations & Institutionally Related Foundations, Brian Flahaven, circulated some information highlighting key aspects of the legislation (which is known by its clever acronym: the Credit CARD Act...get it? Credit Card? Credit CARD?).
According to Flahaven, disclosure obligations vary, depending on the kind of "alumni group" involved.
I'll quote Brian's note at length, since his explanation is detailed and clear:
Alumni Associations Not Separate From Institution The law requires institutions of higher education to "publicly disclose any contract or other agreement made with a card issuer or creditor for the purpose of marketing a credit card." This means that alumni associations that are not separate from their colleges and universities will now have to disclose all affinity credit card marketing agreements. Final regulations released by the Federal Reserve Board indicate that institutions can meet this requirement by posting the contract or agreement on [their] Web site or by making it available upon request.
Alumni Associations Organized as Separate 501(c)3 Organizations The law requires credit card companies to disclose any marketing agreements with institutions of higher education, alumni associations and affiliated foundations under which credit cards are issued to college students. This means that any card agreement where a student has been issued a card would be subject to disclosure by the credit card company, not the alumni association. Final regulations released by the Federal Reserve Board...
...Clarify that "an agreement may qualify as a college credit card agreement even if marketing of cards under the agreement is targeted at alumni, faculty, staff and other non-student consumers, as long as cards may also be issued to students in connection with the agreement."
...Define college student broadly. The definition includes students of any age attending an institution of higher education and applies to students enrolled in graduate or joint degree programs.
Finally, Flahaven provides additional links as resources:
Brian closes with this advice: "If you receive a request for a copy of your association's affinity credit card agreement, we encourage you to review the law with your legal counsel to determine your disclosure requirements."
I would say, even if you don't receive a request for a copy of the agreement, go ahead and review the law with general counsel. You should know your legal obligations.
Contact Brian Flahaven at CASE directly with your questions:
This is the second of Andrew Gossen's two guest posts about Facebook's Open Graph initiative. Andrew is Senior Director of Social Media Strategy at Cornell University and co-chair of the Task Force on Social Media for CASE's Commission on Alumni Relations.
My previous posting addressed the potential of
Facebook's Open Graph Protocol to enhance your institutional website, adding
new social and dynamic dimensions as well as the possibility of a personalized
browsing experience. It sounds great.
But what about the privacy issue?
Ahh, the Facebook privacy issue. Over the past week, it
has been unavoidable. Several observers have maintained an excellent, broader conversation about the evolution of
privacy on Facebook and the higher-level philosophical debate. Andrew Careaga highlighted a number of the most influential recent blog postings on the
subject. Michael Stoner provided a nice overview of some of the issues, and
there are interesting visualizations of the evolution and complexity of privacy on Facebook. All of these are
worthy of careful reading and reflection.
But back to the Open Graph. If you deploy parts of the
Open Graph toolkit, are you putting your alumni in jeopardy? Consider the two
main tools:
Social
plugins I'm not particularly worried about these. If people don't want to click on "like"
or "recommend" buttons, they don't have to. If their browser isn't
logged in to Facebook, or if they don't have a Facebook account, they'll only
see very generic social information (click images to enlarge):
The counterargument is that users may not realize that
clicking the links is a public action, and that their activity may be shared
with third parties. Some IT security companies are developing tools that allow
organizations to control or monitor social plugin functionality in the name of
data and network security. This concern should be balanced, however, against early evidence that use of
the social plugins does, in fact, generate additional referral traffic to websites.
Open Graph
API Here, things get more complicated. Some interesting criticism argues that
neither Facebook nor its Open Graph launch partners have implemented their own
protocol very well. At this point, we may just be seeing the
tip of the iceberg in terms of what a website fully personalized with these
tools might look like.
So how are privacy options communicated on sites using
the Open Graph API thus far?
To
start with, people can opt out as soon as they land on a web page for the first
time:
The
"Learn More" link provides more detail, although the amount of detail depends
on the site in question – Pandora, for instance, uses a generic Facebook
explanation while
Yelp offers more specific information. A more
specific option definitely would play better to alumni.
Every
time you return to a page that is personalized through Facebook, you are reminded of that and given options:
There is no doubt that Facebook has defaulted users' privacy settings to public sharing in a way that will make the Open Graph
ecosystem work more smoothly, but you can also make the claim that privacy control tools are
readily available. The presence of tools
does not guarantee that they'll be used, however – recent research by Consumer
Reports indicates that 23% of Facebook users are not aware of, or do not use, any privacy
settings to control access to their information.
Bottom Line At this point, I'd be reluctant to implement the Open
Graph API too aggressively.Concern
about privacy is one element of this wariness, but I also don't yet feel like I
have a solid grasp of what the end product would look like. I'd prefer to see whether
some of the more dire loss-of-privacy scenarios come to pass, as well as
examine some fully-implemented examples of the Open Graph API first.Ironically, increasing levels of
concern about privacy on Facebook may provide advancement offices with an
opportunity to provide a valuable service to alumni by using social media
channels to apprise them of privacy best practices, as well as providing this
training in face-to-face or virtual formats. I'll be doing a Social Media 101
webinar with Cornell class volunteers, and I'll certainly devote a
portion of it to privacy concerns.
Second, what about the institutional perspective? Should
we be comfortable withFacebook
gathering data on what Facebook users are doing on our web pages and sharing
that information with third parties? That's a cost/benefit question whose
answer may vary from institution to institution, and from various vantage
points within each institution. Do the additional functionality and the
potential for increased connectivity outweigh the risks? Does anyone have an
accurate sense of the real risk at this point? There are far more questions
than answers, but the questions are worth asking. It seems shortsighted to
discard a tool as potentially powerful as the Open Graph API out of hand,
especially since, as noted before, we're yet not really sure what a full
implementation looks like.
And remember, in a Web 2.0 world, letting institutional considerations
determine too much about how you engage your alumni may result in them leaving
you behind.
The important decision about the Open Graph protocol
isn't really in your hands; it's in the hands of your alumni. If they continue
to flock to Facebook and they like the additional functionality, you need to be
there with them and use the tools they use themselves. Or you need to be
comfortable with the consequences of not doing so. If they depart for greener
pastures en masse, it's not worth your time to stay, anyway.
Fortunately, social media is a great tool for finding out
what your alumni are thinking. Ask their opinion. Listen. Engage. You'll make a
better decision on the Open Graph initiative, and you'll advance your relationship
with your alumni on the social web.
[Updated 22 October: See response to this topic from Ohio State's Ted Hattemer in the comments.]
The October 2009 issue of CASE CURRENTS magazine was sure to make it into this blog. But this posting isn't about what I thought I'd be writing about.
I was ready to launch a rant about whether private label social networks are a good investment for cash-strapped under-staffed alumni operations (answer: No). Then I noticed the informative article about reputation management by Kim Fernandez (Operation Reputation: How to manage and protect your institution's online image, p. 32. CASE member log in required for online access). This is a good resource for educational institutions navigating the sometimes turbulent waters of unmoderated online discussions.
The two paragraphs that caught my attention were about Ohio State University's reaction last spring when a student questioned university president Gordon Gee's membership on the board of an energy company. The company was under scrutiny for questionable environmental practices. Rather than ignore the question, answer the question, or thank the student for participating in the discussion, university officials deleted the question and disabled the comments function on that page.
A few days later, after some negative publicity, the school reinstated the commenting capability on its Facebook Page. I recently presented this as an example of a school that "learned how social media work, and how to live with the uncertainties of Web 2.0." I believed – or rather, I assumed – that OSU's decision resulted from a thoughtful understanding of the new landscape we face, and an awareness that someone who complains or challenges the school is an engaged constituent. The most important thing, I explained, is not whether they agree with everything the school does, it's that they care enough to participate in the discussion.
But it turns out I was wrong about OSU's reasons for reinstating Facebook fans' ability to leave comments.
In CURRENTS I read that
Ted Hattemer, director of new media at the university, says the policy reversal boiled down to a free-speech issue. 'What we found is that...Ohio State property has the requirement of meeting a basic freedom of speech. We quickly reversed the decision [to remove the post] once we figured that out, thanks to good advice from our legal affairs departments.'
I'm all for free speech, but that's not what this is about. Making this decision on the basis of a legal opinion makes OSU technically correct, but reveals a lack of awareness as to why "free speech" is important in online forums.
Students, alumni and friends expect to be heard because they can be heard – not because a lawyer said it's OK for them to be heard.
The silver lining may be that the next time a well-intentioned senior administrator asks of your Facebook Page, "But what if a student criticizes us?" you can say that it's not a problem: OSU's new legal precedent - finally - allows people to use the internet to express their opinions.
[Updated 13 November, 2009: Inside Higher Ed reports that Baylor's independent association cannot perform its traditional role at Commencement.]
[Updated 28 October, 2009: Inside Higher Ed reports that Baylor has rescinded its offer to absorb the independent association. Article includes links to several prior background accounts.]
[Updated 26 October, 2009:Dallas Morning News reports on the relationship between the university and its Alumni Association.]
"I am just as confused about the Baylor Alumni Association and Baylor University parting ways completely as everybody else. And I too feel like there are holes in the story and some things aren't being said..."
That was one reader's reaction to a story on the Waco Tribune-Herald's web site yesterday, under the headline:
Baylor University removes alumni association's link from its Web site
Why would a university remove from its site the link to its own alumni association? And shut off the toll-free telephone number the school had previously provided for the association? I don't know the history of this, but the presentation of the story by the Waco paper combines with readers' comments for an interesting narrative.
Apparently part of a planned separation so that Baylor's Alumni Association could take on independent status, differing versions of the split are causing friction between the school and its support organization. In particular, the ongoing presidential search on the Texas school's campus is mentioned by both sides' supporters as a point of contention. The University's site dedicated to the search is appropriately peppered with press releases and background information from the school and its governance group. In contrast, the Alumni Association's version of the same site provides links to a number of published commentaries about the process itself and the actors involved.
A quick scan of Facebook shows official groups and pages for the school itself and the Association, but as yet no discernible discussion around these topics (other than passing comments about the last president's departure). If these issues are truly of broad interest to alumni, we might expect to see Facebook groups appear supporting one side or the other.
Meanwhile, with most independent associations moving from independent to dependent status over time, it's unusual to see a school's association moving in the opposite direction. Whatever the background or political and personal battles may involve, the reader quoted above may well have it right: some things haven't yet been explained publicly and if there's more to report that seems worthwhile I'll pass it along here.