Athlete Facebook Privacy

Patriot Acts.....

this seems a little excessive and maybe digging too hard into people's personal lives. i think student-athletes should be cautious of some of the things they put online as they represent a university at a higher level than someone who is simply a student. with that being said, it seems like an organization that monitors your every move is like hiring a private investigator. a bit much for 18-22 year olds in college. if athletic departments feel like coaches are that far off from grasping whats going on in their athletes' lives then thats a whole different issue that needs to be addressed internally but i think this is going a little too far

Ryan's words are wisely chosen I think. It seems to me that Universities are paternalistic, authoritarian and self-serving in the way they treat student athletes. It's difficult for mature folks to know what their rights are in this day and age. It must be even more challenging for young people, particularly those who as athletes are in some sense in the public eye. This seems particularly paternalistic given the recent track record of another university in Pennsylvania, which proved unwilling to protect young people from it's own staff.

at Texas A&M about a year ago, maybe two years ago the athletic department tried to make all the athletes with Facebook allow the app Udiligence to monitor any athletes facebook. I know a few people didnt allow the app access and never got in trouble or kicked off the team.

good thing i deleted my facebook

How does a monitoring service build young men and women into productive citizens? Colleges are there to educate and build good human beings. By using this service Villanova is basically saying they are not confident in the student athletes they bring into their school and coaches/teachers ability to teach them to be upstanding citizens. You dont create good habits, by being big brother. They should give people responsibilities and hold them accountable for their actions good or bad. I would not send my kid to a school that needs a big brother like monitoring program period.

The people who think the University has a right to do this because the student athletes are "privileged" need to understand that all contracts carry both privileges, rights and responsibilities for both parties. In this case, the University is demanding far too much of the student and way over-stepping the rights of the institution to safeguard it's interests. A student could just as well require that the University administrators sign a contract refusing to ever make a statement about the student without prior written approval. The company offering this product is praying on loopholes in the law what would never hold up in court, and relying on the fact that few students will have the courage or resources to challenge this.

Whats wrong with an institution following you. Here in China the government follows every move we make and things are just dandy.

I'm shocked that it appears that the majority of people at the University of Texas support this philosophy.

http://www.burntorangenation.com/2012/1/24/2729861/texas-pays-company-to-monitor-players-fb-accounts

The sad truth is that we live in a time when universities would rather not accept the responsibility of guiding their members. They would rather hire an outside police force to do their work for them, not knowing if that force will act responsibly or in the best-interest of their clients. It doesn't speak well of Villanova that they would rather trust an "VarsityMoniter" than their own staff or their students. They should be TEACHING and GUIDING their students toward responsible behavior. Instead they are abdicating their responsibility and entrusting their students' information to third part whose sole interest is making money.

While I don't agree that the administration or coaches have any right to monitor your Facebook- it's important to remember that whatever you put online can easily be seen by anyone. All it takes is someone taking a screen shot and passing information around.

This is outrageous. Universities have no right to monitor students personal lives this much. If they don't want their athletes to reflect poorly on their institution, how about they just assign us a 24/7 watchdog so they can monitor our off-campus/offline remarks too? Wait, maybe I shouldn't say that because they just might start doing it...

Deny the request, get your teammates to do so as well, and write a formal, appropriate and strong letter of complaint to the athletic department and the school. Tell them you will not stand for this infringement of your First Amendment Rights AND your Fourth Amendment Right to privacy.

Same thing is happening here at Boise State University. I think this goes way too far and the coaches do not have the right to demand this of their athletes.

Yea this is probably one of the stupidest things ive heard in a looonngg time. It should be the responsibility of the student not to post stupid pics on their fb. And if you really really just need to post that pic of yourself bonging 3 beers at a time, then you should be very familiar with how to limit who sees what. And lets be honest, this isnt going to change a thing in the long run. Kids will figure out ways around it, loopholes, etc, etc. We are talking about college kids here. They will always party, there is no way around that, its part of the college experience. The people behind this garbage are probably the same ones who spent their saturday nights in college playing dungeons and dragons and drinking caprisun. C'mon, get real..

I am a D2 athlete on my schools SAAC committee, and we recently had to vote for a similar rule, my school voted no, but apparently 95% of the rest of the schools voted yes. Apparently my school is the only one that read the new D2 legislatures carefully.