Controlling Athletes' Use of Social Media

[Rudy]

I read the WaPo article on this and now see it on the front page here. So the college administrators appear more upset that evidence of improper benefits showed up on posts than the presence of improper benefits. Why are so many people obsessed with controlling others' legal behavior?? Let the kids be kids and let them say pretty much what they want. I understand the issue of reflecting well on the program, but reminders of that (and disciplining when they stray) should be enough. Monitoring players' social media accounts seems an unwarranted control and invasion of privacy.

[Acymetric]

I read the WaPo article on this and now see it on the front page here. So the college administrators appear more upset that evidence of improper benefits showed up on posts than the presence of improper benefits. Why are so many people obsessed with controlling others' legal behavior?? Let the kids be kids and let them say pretty much what they want. I understand the issue of reflecting well on the program, but reminders of that (and disciplining when they stray) should be enough. Monitoring players' social media accounts seems an unwarranted control and invasion of privacy.

I disagree. Monitoring just means observing. Its not like the players are giving their passwords to someone who will be logging into their account to check things out. All this is is that now someone on the coaching staff will be required to do what thousands of fans already did: read facebook and twitter posts of all the players. When you're posting something for millions of people to see there can be no expectation of privacy to begin with. Is it an invasion of privacy for coaches to have access to a student's grades?

Edit: I should add that I agree with the first part of your post...and that attitude really bothers me. I think its been a good thing that social media has been exposing violations at schools. Maybe we can finally start really trying to clean things up...might be too much to hope for though.

[Scorp4me]

It's the job of any coach to help kids continue to mature. It's the role of any college to prepare them for life in the real world.

In this day and age your online persona is more and more intertwined with your offline real life. And as the DBR is fond of pointing out even though they are in college they are still kids.

I've grown frustrated the past few days by the implications that UNC is somehow limiting free speech while Duke is encouraging it. It's only a matter of time before this hits every school including Duke and they would be good in this situation to be at least proactive.

Both for the sake of the institution and the kid. That is assuming you still feel kids are generally good...if you don't then being proactive serves only to protect yourself and hide the things they are doing. Which as the original poster pointed out is quite sad.