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Facebook issues
Hi Ladies!
I don't know if i'm posting under the correct thread, but I need help brainstorming. My chapter is having alot of problems with members' facebook profiles. It's so annoying! We have spent at least an hour discussing this issue in every chapter meeting since March and many of the profiles are still not appropriate. I mean we are all adults and the sisters should know what is appropriate and what is not. Recruitment is coming up in 3 weeks and I'm concerned. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. |
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There's only so much you can do. Is your Exec Board allowed to slap them with fines and/or put them on restriction if they don't comply with your chapter's internet policy? Personally, I don't believe in either of those examples and I really think it might make the situation worse. Maybe I'm saying this because FaceBook was just in its Beta stages when I finished college, but if you're concerned that PNMs might look at you folks negatively because of a few FaceBook profiles, then you're probably be better off without them anyway. Focus your time and effort on putting on the best recruitment ever and don't waste it worrying about a few bad profiles. |
If you're concerned about members' profiles not being appropriate, then why not just tell everyone to make their profiles private during recruitment?
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Apparently UF chapters had this same problem. So much so that Panhellenic put a stop to the madness. In order to reduce the amount of contact between PNMs and actives, and also to prevent tarnshing the image of the Greek community as a whole, every active has to set their profile to private (friends only) from April through recruitment.
If an active's profile is not set to private, the chapter is fined. The chapters then hand the fines down to the active. As far as I know, this has worked well for us. I keep mine on private year round just for safety's sake (now that facebook is open to everyone). You might try instating a fine, maybe $25 or so. This way you aren't forcing your sisters to clean up their profiles or change what they may feel is a personal expression, but you are protecting your chapter's image as a whole. |
Maybe try giving them a choice--they can either keep the pictures but remove any reference to the sorority and their membership, OR they can keep the references to the sorority but have to remove photos or anything else inappropriate. It becomes their choice then. If they don't change it, then using whatever judicial structure you have in place with your chapter would be appropriate.
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After looking through the Webshots, Photobucket and Snapfish sites I suggest the active chapters include these in their bans.
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This may sound harsh but I've found that after you've done the general warnings/discussions, direct confrontation and even embarrassment gets the quickest results. One option is to pick up the phone and call the specific members. Another is to announce a list of names to the Chapter of who needs to clean things up. Nobody wants that phone call or to be on that list. We've also set up a volunteer committee to randomly check pages throughout the year. It's easier to take care of these things one at a time rather than trying to clean up dozens before Recruitment. Plus you never know when a future PNM or even a parent might be scanning through your members' pages. |
I like ufpiphi's suggestion - everyone should make their profiles private. If you're doing this because of rush, and you single people out and discipline them, it will make them feel negative about rush and that's the LAST thing you need.
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kddani, OT
Hello. No, I am from the University of Southern California. |
At Purdue, the actives have to deactivate their facebook accounts the day that accepted freshmen receive their purdue email addresses. It is harsh, but it keeps the freshmen from looking up sisters and chapters having to police pictures, etc. Then when recruitment is over, the actives can reactivate their account, and they still have all their info, friends, etc.
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At my school, we were just all instructed to make our profiles private from the start of school until after bid night. It solved the problem pretty quickly.
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Thanks everyone. I will bring these suggestions to the table. Personally, I am not on Facebook so I don't know much about setting profiles to private and such. I appreciate everybody's input. Thank you
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It might be too late to make a suggestion, but I figured I might as well.
What we do on our campus is everyone keeps their profiles on private and then during the week of recruitment all sorority women de-activate their accounts. Its even written into recruitment rules, so if you don't deactivate that week your chapter could potentially get into trouble. Since PNM's are more likely to get on facebook after thier rush night is over and look up the girls they met that night, it works out well. |
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-Facebooks and myspace's should be private -Rho Chi's must erase any "How you know this person" especially if it says So-and-so are members of XYZ sorority -Actives CAN NOT add any PNM's -If Actives & PNMs are friends/siblings/etc and already are friends on Myspace/Facebook, Actives must delete PNMs from friend's list This is all to protect the identities of the Rho Chi's so its fair to everyone. |
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1. If the active's profile is private, how can anyone know whether or not the active is friends with PNMs? Wouldn't the private feature mean that no one who is not friends with the active would be able to see the active's profile and who her friends are? 2. What kind of information is given to the PNMs so that they know that so-and-so is unfriending them as a requirement for recruitment, not because so-and-so is pissed at them? |
If someone's profile is private, you can still see who their friends are. Also if actives' profiles are private, but the PNM ones aren't, you can go by who's friends with the PNMs.
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Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great way to curb the sorority-members-friending-random-PNMs trend, but I just think it would be a ton of work to check up on it to make sure everyone was on the up and up. |
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You can choose to make your friends private too, I believe. It's a question of how tight the person had set the privacy settings.
Generally, I think you should only have the rules that you can actually enforce. If panhellenic facebook rules will only be enforced in cases in which for some reason dirty rushing is suspected, I think they might work. But you can't effectively screen all the greek profiles at most schools frequently enough for them to be preventative. Similarly if a chapter is having trouble with "bad" stuff on people's profiles, the chapter should maybe vote in fines (or standards rules) for the issues that they are having. So that way, they can address the problems without committing to screening everyone all the time. You become aware of the problem, then you handle it according to your policies. If you've warned the chapter at large repeatedly, and you still have some people who aren't with the program, I'd set up a projector at chapter and show them what the problem is by pulling up their facebook profiles right there. If they are embarrassed by seeing what they have put on their profiles for all the world to see, they should immediately see what the problem is. If they don't, then you need a clear and uniform policy to address what happens next. |
It may be too late for any advice on this topic, but I thought I would shard what we do at my school. I am the media tech chair of my sorority, so this falls under my duties.
Our rules for facebook are as follows, and only pertain to the Offical recruitment period (graduation to the night of the following bid day) 1. No active member can accept and PNMs as friends on facebook 2. And pictures involving parties or alcohol must be removes, although we reccommend all picture be taken down 3. Privatize your account to ensure no inappropriate pictures are seen by PNMs 4. Remove all pictures of recruitment couselors As the media tech chair, I periodically check peoples facebooks at random to see if they have deleted their picture or what not yet, as does our VP membership. If you dont have someone designated for the job, it may be a good idea to do so. That way you can be certain that everything is ok. I haven't done this, but another idea is to set up a new facebook account, and not accept any of your sisters as your friends, that way you can view facebook as a PNM would view facebook. |
So .. if they are really determined to dirty rush, won't they just find some means other than facebook to do it? Thinking.. Yahoo, AOL, MSN all have instant messaging with fairly anonymous screennames. It's pretty tough to figure out who someone is by their Yahoo ID much of the time.
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