Friend Me?: School policy may address friending students online

Facebook logo by benstein (www.flickr.com/photos/88526923@N00). Photo montage by Dan Taylor (www.flickr.com/photos/dantaylor).

Board of education policies, which often carry the weight of law in a district, define acceptable behavior for district employees. Many districts already have or are now updating guidelines to address interaction between teachers and students on social networks. Depending on how the policy is written, it may—intentionally or otherwise—prohibit friending students on social networks.

Some policies, like the Torrance (CA) Unified School District’s, prohibit “any type of sexual relationship, sexual contact, or sexually nuanced behavior between a school employee and an enrolled student [via] 'MySpace’ or similar Web sites, cell phones, and all other forms of electronic or other types of communication.”

Other policies are a bit more vague, like the Elba (NY) Central School District’s, which prohibits “frequent unprofessional and/or personal communication with a student (via phone, e-mail, letters, notes, text messaging, social networking sites and/or other electronic communications, etc.) unrelated to course work or official school matters.”

Although I’m not a lawyer and this should not be considered a legal opinion, I would be very uncomfortable having students as social network friends if I was working under the second, more vague policy. Frequent updates, which are common on sites like Facebook, and the typical mix of topics unrelated to school matters would make this quite worrisome.

How can libraries and librarians be involved in social networking? My first suggestion would be to avoid mixing personal and school profiles. Even if your district’s current policy doesn’t specifically prohibit this type of interaction, it leaves you open to potential problems. For example, if a student posted a sexually nuanced photo on their profile, it could show up on your account via a friend update.

If you want to have a profile, consider establishing an organizational one as an official page for your library or school. Then students can become a fan of the library instead of establishing the usual two-way friend relationship. Make sure your administration is aware of what you are doing; in fact I would recommend sharing the profile password with your principal so he or she can oversee the content.

The other option is to build an internal social network that’s based on school topics. Sites like Ning, Edmodo, and Wiggio offer free social network services. For a fee, Yammer provides an assortment of social networking options along with the security and content monitoring that most districts desire. Elgg is an open-source social networking platform, which your district can run internally for the optimal level of control and oversight.

Libraries and librarians certainly need to be active participants in social networks; that’s even stipulated in AASL’s Standards for the 21st Century Learner. But, at the same time, we need to make sure that we’re following board policies and being social in a responsible and lawful manner.