Why do we tell PNMs to clean up their Facebook?
 

After reading yet another thread telling a PNM why she needs to clean up her online presence, I thought... Why do we do this?

If the PNM is someone who needs to hide who she truly is in order to have a favorable outcome during recruitment, why do we want to extend an invitation to her?

If chapters really don't care if the woman parties hard, sleeps around, does drugs, etc. then why remove those facts from her online profile? It is simply truth in advertising.

If chapters don't want a woman who parties hard, sleeps around, does drugs, etc. then it is to our benefit to have that information available so we know who we are really dealing with.

I'm probably in the minority, but I agree with you. Facebook can be valuable to both PNMs and to sorority members.

I think the problem is that FB may not be very representative. For example, I think every FB picture of me in the last year involves me drinking. Does that mean I do nothing but drink? No, it means that I am so busy that I hardly ever go out, so all the picture-taking occasions in my life are weddings, big parties, etc.

If you do one stupid thing, and a friend snaps a photo and tags you, I don't think that should disqualify you from membership.

Also, there are things that may be okay to the collegians that would have the 85-year-old rush advisor clutching her pearls.

One problem is that a Facebook presence may not be "who she truly is" at all. Some people -- gasp, including recent high school grads -- may have deliberately made themselves look wilder / skankier than they are, in the belief that they'll seem more mature, attractive, whatever.

Of course, others may have toned their lives down a lot for Facebook.

One never knows just from Facebook, right?

Some of the "clean it up" advice is a way of saying "give yourself a break, for purposes of a first impression."

I was putting together a slideshow for a charitable organization this month and I noticed this phenomenon. Nearly every photo that was contributed (and there were over 80) was of the members drinking. We looked like horrible lushes! It took a major effort to find pictures without alcohol in them to try to balance out the presentation so it wasn't embarrassing :o

Swerving, but how is this different from asking someone to "put his/her best foot forward" for a job interview?

This is my thought as well. "Clean up your facebook" is good advice for life, including and excluding GLO recruitment/membership.

This.

This

My guess is that if a rush advisor has reached 85, she's seen things that would make most of the current sisters blush. :)

This

indeed she has!

Ditto.

You're also over 21. Most PNMs are not.

Because you are only an employee of your company for 8 hours a day. You are a sorority member 24/7.

Perhaps we'd have fewer issues with members posting stupid things on Facebook, allowing themselves to have pics taken of them while holding drinks when they are under 21, etc. if we only gave bids to young women who were smart enough to keep their social media posts clean in the first place. It's called good judgment. As the parent of an 11th grader and a 9th grader, I can say that very few of the young people's Facebook pages that I see have anything inappropriate on them. Those are the young people I'd want to be joining our GLOs.

I also think it's a similar principle to why we should not judge sororities by their websites. A website cannot accurately represent a sisterhood, nor can a facebook page represent a woman. Both can be easily manipulated to look one way or another and therefore aren't reliable means of evaluation.

To this end, I don't know if I'd want to be friends with some of my current sisters if I judged them solely on their facebooks-- but of course now they are some of my best friends and future bridesmaids! To put it succinctly-- facebook is a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional person.

Not exactly. Even though it's 9:30 PM, I'm still *technically* an employee of my company.

If you choose to drink yourself silly whenever you're not at work, as long as you don't show up drunk, they can't fire you for it. You can also be on your best behavior at work but do what you want when you're home (unless they have random drug screens). It's not the same. I'd rather know that a young woman is going to be a risk management issue before we give her a bid.

I'm sure that, ideally, a company would want to know if its employees participated in risky activities when they're not doing company business. The fact that no one has any issues with keeping things "hidden" from your job is fascinating.

If you read what I wrote, I said that I thought that people with good judgment kept those things hidden. I'm not saying it isn't prudent to keep your social media profile pretty clean. I'm saying that it makes it easier for us to avoid issues/problems if we don't tell them.

I hate to be a cynic, but they're the minority.

You can keep your FB clean as a whistle and then your dumbass friend tags one unflattering pic of you, and if you don't get to it before someone else sees it, you're toast. (And no, disallowing your friends from tagging you is NOT an option. That's pretty much like telling your friends to their faces that they're dumbasses. Not many 18 year olds will do that.)

Chapters dealing with hypercompetitive rushes are looking for ANY reason to cut the zillion girls they need to cut. Not in a malicious way, but in a "holy crap we have to get this done before we can sleep" way. A picture with a solo cup/the wrong guy/hair in rollers can be enough to do that.

I apologize -- I only focused on the line that I quoted.

Like Gusteau said earlier and like you reiterated, "keep your online presence clean" is good advice. However -- I read the rest of your reply as "If you're smart enough to trick us into thinking you're an angel, you deserve a bid from us." That seems flawed.

For clarification: When you say 'risk management issue,' do you mean in general or specifically in the digital space? That may be why I'm not getting the full message you're trying to convey.

Common message board flaw.

I think there is a difference in telling PNMs to keep their facebooks clean and secure because it's just good sense and others telling PNMs "OMG, detag every picture you've ever been in if there is a single solo cup somewhere in the background and don't friend any sorority women before recruitment because they are only friending you to stalk you!!!!" (because this is truly how it comes across from some GCers).

Sure people in general should not be putting up content that they are not willing to be judged on. But I think that some PNMs get scared and detag every picture of a family members wedding because her uncle in the background is holding a beer bottle.

As for the friending issue, you can either be the PNM who rejects every sorority women's fb friendship request and be judged for that and miss out on potentially getting to know sorority women before recruitment (which we stress is a good thing) or you can accept those requests and just keep your page clean - which is good common sense.

I think this is a very interesting point. Personally, I cleaned up my facebook before going through rush because even though I did not drink in high school, I would get photographed at parties where red solo cups were present, and having those pictures on my profile could have given sororities an incorrect impression of me.

I also agree with the comment about only being photographed when out with friends. Although I spent a good amount of time studying for AP classes and volunteering with my church in the afternoons, those aren't exactly activities where a camera would be present. The only photographic documentation of my life was of a couple of hours on Friday and Saturday nights.

That being said, I still think that it is important to advise PNMs to clean their facebooks because it can tell you something about the individual. The PNM's opinion of what is a "clean facebook" can tell you a lot about her personal life. If she leaves up pictures of her and her friends dancing on tables (but no cups in sight!) that paints a different picture than the girl that only leaves up posed prom pictures. After the girl is in the sorority, discretion is important, since she represents that organization, and already knowing what sort of stuff is acceptable on a public profile is helpful.

I thought it was against contact rules for sorority women at a school having rush in August to friend rushees now.

Also, IMO, you shouldn't friend ANYONE you don't know/haven't met personally just because their profile says they go to your college. As I said before, they can be creepy stalkers. If you go to a school with deferred rush, go out and MEET sorority women, and THEN friend them/accept their FRs.

I think the real issue here is what to do about PNM's that put up too many pictures of themselves with duckface.

We immediately exclude them from ever being Greek. Or rescind their college admissions.:D

When I'm at work, some of my more familiar clients have come up to me and said "weren't you at so-and-so yesterday?" It has never been anything scandalous, strictly locational, but I can imagine if I was being a drunken smutbag, it would reflect poorly on my company.

Well, if they know this, then they were there too, weren't they? So what's the problem/point?

You apparently have not been in the corporate world long and are way underestimating the numbers of gainfully employed, higher-up drunken smutbags.

In all honesty, almost every time a chapter is caught doing something against risk management policies these days, it is because someone posted it on Facebook or another social media site. The other times, it is usually because someone had to go to the hospital. 9 times out of 10, if someone hadn't posted it online, nobody would have known/gotten in trouble. That's the perspective I'm coming from.

Ironically enough, the only reason I ever came to greekchat was because a chapter was asking what to do about someone who posted things here that were inappropriate and they wanted me to read the posts. I got hooked on this darn board in the process...lol. That was the first time I was involved in an Internet posting issue, but it was just the beginning of a long line of social media issues.

It reminds me of young people who cuss like sailors no matter where they are. They don't have enough sense to know that how they talk around friends is not how they should be talking in other situations. It was usually the boys I worked with in adolescent psych who would do that back in the day and my standard feedback to them was "Locker Room Talk, not Occupational Therapy talk!" I understand that teenagers swear. I understand that a lot of teenagers party.

Having the sense to be discrete is an important life skill, not for recruitment, but for life.

OK, that makes more sense.

I was reading it as "We can determine whether or not you will haze our new members / act a drunken mess / fail out of classes / whatever based on your SM profiles." Plus, I was tired when all of this was posted lol

The GC Lesson of the Day! :D

People oversharing and not knowing to STFU has been going on a long time before Facebook.

As I've said before, when you live in a state and/or go to a school with more stringent alcohol regulations than most, you just naturally learn to keep things close to the vest, but I think nowadays they don't even get that any more. I'm sure a lot of this is because punishment from parents is not what it used to be. A sorority's national office disciplining a chapter is probably the first time some people have ever heard "hey, you screwed up."

Personally, I blame The Real World and the concept of the worse you behave, the more media attention you get.

I agree. If we can see all their photos, we get a better picture of them overall and can see..what sort of rep they deserve.:eek:

It'll never happen, though. :rolleyes:

Every school has different contact rules and different campus cultures. If you have deferred recruitment you can't believe that sorority members and PNMs who happen to be in the same club, same class, or even hang out at the same fraternity house for a semester aren't going to friend each other, even if they bearly know each other.

But if some PNMs are scared of being fb friends with a sorority women after meeting them -even briefly, and rejects the friendship request, it's could be a mental note for the sorority member. And especially for competitive campuses who need to make cuts for any reason possible. You can't say that this absolutely would not come into consideration. I'm not saying they have to go out an "friend" every single sorority woman, but they need to make socially smart decisions.

Kudos to AGDee!

This is a great and important comment, but because I am a spelling freak and former copy editor, it's discreet.
Discrete = "apart or detached from others; separate; distinct: six discrete parts."
Discreet = "1. judicious in one's conduct or speech, especially with regard to respecting privacy or maintaining silence about something of a delicate nature; prudent; circumspect. 2. showing prudence and circumspection; decorous: a discreet silence."
(Thank you dictionary.com)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think on most campuses interacting with a PNM via facebook would be considered "dirty rushing".

And as far as someone tagging a picture and you not getting to it first -- in the day of smartphones, that's not really an excuse. The majority of people I know have internet on their phone and can set up notifications for when a picture is tagged.

How is it dirty rushing? For example: If you have deferred recruitment in the spring, and a freshman girl has an orientation leader in August who happens to also be an XYZ and they friend each other. Orientation ends, they still see each other from time to time on campus and are friendly. (This could apply to R.A.s or a lab partner, etc).

Again, it depends on the school's no contact rules. The chapter I work with, this scenario is not considered dirty rushing and is quite the norm. Most PNMs go into recruitment being fb friends with many sorority women in many different sororities. No contact does not go into effect until registration for recruitment opens. Prior to that, you can have social media connections.

I can see how this is different in deferred recruitment since they are technically not a PNM until registration is open. It just sounds like dirty rushing since at most campuses recruitment is in the fall and these connections are made over the summer (when registration is open) and not in the first semester(when registration is closed for deferred).

I think the problem is that kids just do not understand how their internet life impacts their real life, so they don't see the need to censor their profiles. Judging them for this is counter-productive, IMO, because a lot of good PNMs likely have inappropriate content on their profiles that doesn't reflect who they are 90% of the time...not to mention many actives would have the exact same crap on their profiles if their chapters didn't forbid it.

It's really more of a social problem and a "kids today" problem than anything else. I think schools and parents need to do a better job of hammering home exactly how damaging a bad Facebook page can be.

And bottom line, if a girl is out of control enough to be a risk management issue it's unlikely actives need facebook to see that. She'll give herself away before getting a bid.

If you have deferred and meet the people in person, friend away. That's the whole point of deferred rush.

I'm talking about if Katie Kappa from Bama got on her FB now, in May, and sent a friend request to Franny Freshman (whom she has never met, has no connections to and the only reason she has her name is because Franny posted on the college's FB page asking about sororities).

Not only is this dirty rushing, Franny should be cautious because IRL Katie Kappa could be a 50 year old creepy hacker dude.