Attack of the Blogs

By Kristin D. Wodarski
Residence Hall Director
Boston College
kristin.wodarski.1@bc.edu

Posted: August, 2004     Student Affairs Online, vol. 5 no. 3 - Summer 2004

IM is so 1990s. Weblogs are the latest student technology phenomenon, and they are about to impact your work in a whole new way.

First, there was IM.
Walk though the corridors of my residence hall and you will be greeted by the cacophony of pinging noises that messages make when they are sent. The widespread popularity of instant messaging (IM) has changed communication on campus. As an RD, I find that IM is the most efficient way to communicate with my RAs, and they appreciate having easy access to me. The Office of Residential Life at Boston College even has an IM name that students use to ask questions. So, given all of this embracing technology and my muddling FileMaker Pro ability, I thought I was a tech-savvy student affairs administrator. Then one night I read the blog of a friend and former student, and that all changed.

If you were anything like me (and most of Generation X), at one point you kept a diary or journal. You hid it under the bed, or in your sock drawer, and it probably had a little metal lock that fastened two flimsy pieces of plastic. The whole point was to protect your privacy, to keep your innermost thoughts away from prying eyes. My fellow "I remember before there was email" student affairs practitioners, our Millennial students are different. Their diaries are are on the internet, for the world to see.

What is a blog?
Weblogs, or blogs, as they are more commonly called, are a deceptively simple technological phenomenon: journals that are posted to the internet. Their origin is attributed to the 1990s independent magazine ('zine) scene, when producers did not want to incur the costs of printing and shipping. No one knows exactly when the first blogs were created, but most estimates generally place them around 1995. Although blogs were at first the domain of the tech-savvy who posted to their own web pages, sites dedicated to blogs like livejournal.com, and blogger.com have helped to create an extensive online blogging community. Additionally, over the last several years, providers such as AOL and Google have made blogging a more mainstream practice by creating programs that guide users through creating their own blogs. Estimates for the current number of blogs reach around the 4 million mark, and that number is growing.

There are some significant differences between a blog, a webpage, and IM. For our purposes in this discussion, a blog is simply a serially updated personal journal. It is not a real-time conversation like IM, and there is no specific reader. The blogger writes the journal, posts it, and readers comment on the entry at a later time. Generally speaking, the distinction between blogs and personal web pages is the difference in tone. Blogs are updated frequently, are more intimately detailed, typically include much emotion, and are generally less formal pieces of writing that could include stream-of-consciousness thoughts. All of this- the rough, the unedited, the exaggerated, the brutally honest, the better-left-unsaid, is posted to the internet.

What does this have to do with us in student affairs?
Our students have the capability of producing their own web pages hosted by the institution's domain. Often, these personal web pages are the location of blogs, or they provide a link to blogs that are hosted by an external site. This provides accessibility to a wide viewing audience, including friends, family, and other members of the online blogging community. Leaving aside the complicated discussion of protected access and the social status of receiving passwords, for the sake of an overview, blogs are generally easy to access by anyone who wants to read one.

College students will often blog both as a means to maintain contact with friends at other institutions, as well as a forum to share their own activities, opinions, and feelings. Students studying abroad frequently use blogs both as a way to keep in touch with loved ones and as a travelogue. Keeping in mind, though, the visceral motivation in the writing, and the wide audience that can access the blogs, you begin to see the potential for problems, particularly in a connected community like a college campus.

Consider the following scenarios, all real-life situations gleaned from colleagues at a variety of institutions.

RAs blog, commenting on their jobs, duty nights, frustrations with supervisors, and sometimes even include tales of their own social life that challenge their ability to serve as role models for their residents. Residents blog, giving them a venue to blast RAs whom they dislike, complain about roommates, comment on other residents whom they have dated or "hooked up with," etc. What used to be written on the bathroom wall is now being posted on the internet. RAs have been harassed through comments left on their blogs, and students can be stalked as they detail their daily activities. Residents have even left wills and suicide notes on blogs.

A friend and student at a former institution disclosed through her blog that she had been sexually assaulted. Master's classes and crisis response training hadn't taught me how to respond to cyber disclosure. What was my responsibility to her as a friend? Should I be notifying colleagues at my former institution? What would my responsibility be if she were a current student? An RA?

While most schools do not specifically cover blogs in their institutional policies, I feel this is essentially a case of ethical responsibility, as my ultimate duty is the safety and well-being of my students. The manner in which I find out that they are suffering seems irrelevant, as I am still going to respond.

To read or not to read?
As administrators, should we be reading student blogs? Blogs are often hyperlinked through IM, providing easy access. As supervisors, should we be reading RA blogs? Personal comfort and professional ethics seem to be the deciding factors for each individual. My focus is not to read blogs, but rather to make sure that I understand the landscape of cyber disclosure and am prepared to handle the crises that may come to my attention through blogs. Roommates or RAs may discover issues of domestic violence, eating disorders, drug addictions, or depression, and will come to you with concerns. In other words, you may never look at a blog, but you need to be ready when someone prints one out and slides it under your door.

This discussion has only touched on the many implications of blogs. They are being used in interesting ways in the academic and political realms. They create new consequences for social development, self-esteem, and even academic freedom. Blogs can be beneficial ways to maintain contact with friends, but can also create safety and security concerns for students and residential communities. There is much debate around the social development of students who have spent so much of their lives communicating through cyberspace, and although it is outside the scope of this topic, we should be prepared to see developmental differences in our students as more generations of tech-savvy student come to our campuses. As student affairs practitioners, we need to know and understand our institutions' specific usage agreements, IT policies, and student code of conduct as it applies to technology. We need to be sure that our RAs are being role models both in their behavior on campus and in the way they present themselves through cyber media. Most importantly, we need to be aware of the needs of our students, and know that they may be expressing these needs in a new and very different way.