Student’s Social Behavior
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Schools like Harvard University and others have the right to rescind acceptance offers, monitor, and punish students for online posting. This online postings can fuel an environment of violence and rage among students which threatens the stability of the learning institution. The user-generated content is sometimes biased, and even though the students may want to speak their minds, they may not be aware of the dangers and the permanent damage that they have caused. In the case of the ten students whose applications got revoked, they had posted racist, sexually explicit and violent content in a private Facebook group (). This content is personal since they had mentioned religious groups. Suppose the students could have been allowed into the institution. In that case, they could have been on the limelight and caused the institution to be speculated of their responsibility to ensure that there is no tension to the diverse groups of students who have their presence here.
Institutions have policies that regulate the student’s behaviour online. This policies are important as they helped the institution to be able to monitor the behaviour of these incoming freshmen who had posted. Even though there is the right to free speech, this should not be abused by the students. This is because if such behaviour were condoled, then the students here would have thought that this is the way to go. This is dangerous as schools have a policy against such which the students and the applicants have to read and understand before they are admitted (). Such behaviour would have caused an uproar among the students as this information posted publicly would get to them finally.
When information is posted online, it is no longer remains public. It ceases to be private, and it gets available, and as long as someone has access to the platform where it has been posted, it will be accessed (). Therefore, even though this information was published in a private group and the school was able to access it, students in this institution would have reached them. Considering that institutions have a culturally diverse population of students, this would have caused tension among students directly pointed by this message. Institutions have a social responsibility to make sure that they protect the sexual orientation and religious belonging of its students. President Drew Faust declared “Our values and our theory of education rest on the assumption that members of our community will take the risk of speaking and will actively compete in our wild rumpus of argument and ideas. “Even though this seems to promote the concept of free speech among the Harvard community, it does not allow people to speak their minds in a harmful way.
Schools should be able to monitor the online postings by the students. This is important as most of the students are active online and always almost post the current affairs that are affecting the daily activities. Most of the students are around their phones, and they have logged in to the different social media platforms. This is a worrying trend to the extent of the information they acquire while they are there and as well as to the post they make. This has a tendency of making an appearance to the university and affecting the activities of the learning institutions causing unrest and threaten the safety of the students.
Schools should be able to monitor the activities of their students without prying into their security. This is important by observing their behaviour online. This is important as these activities when they have gone against the institution’s policy, and they should be punished by expulsion or even their learning rescinded at wherever stage they are in their education. Schools can be able to employ social police who can monitor the behaviour of students online. This is an essential aspect as the school can be able to predict the safety of the students when on their grounds. This is important as unrest activities, and demonstration gets organized and spread online. Even though the students have the right to free speech, they should not disrupt learning activities. The activities of monitoring the postings the students are making online are essential. It can help the organization to take necessary actions even before a post has been posted and has not led to detrimental effects against all that are involved.
In conclusion, schools should be able to monitor the activities of their students online. This is because these institutions have an ethical responsibility for ensuring that human rights have been obeyed. People have a right to the religious groups they associate themselves with. They also have a right to the sexual orientation that identify with. It is therefore imperative that their rights are obeyed while the freedom of speech is respected. Even though the freedom of speech is to be respected, it should have clear boundaries, and the students should be encouraged not to make statements that appear against certain people. There should also be a clear distinction to what is offensive and what is not.