Privacy and Cyberspace: The Facebook Saga

Facebook: love it or leave it. Let me fill you in. We, like many other public schools in New York State, are staring down the barrel at record cuts in state and federal funding, thereby leaving the powers that be with the apparently inevitable decision to cut staff. News of the bloodletting was released in sketchy terms at the Board of Education meeting last Monday. Word has started to seep out to the community, and the main ooze point is the student body themselves.

There's nothing new about students protesting the decisions made by school administrations, in fact the students in my school are just continuing a fine, patriotic tradition of civil outcry and disobedience by voicing their displeasure in a very public way. It's just that the public venue has changed from sit-ins to plug-ins. Enter Facebook, the social media networking site extraordinaire. Instead of gathering in Nichols park to decry the state of affairs at the school, or staging a non-violent protest in the principal's office, they did what their generation does best (and, apparently, what the Obama administration in Washington has figured out, as well): they went online.

Students from one particularly popular English teacher's classes have started a blog on Facebook to rally support for their beleaguered instructor, and the posts have been anything but dispassionate. Most of the posts have been in plain support of my colleague, extolling her virtues and appealing to the more logical natures of the Board of Education. In fact, some students have even taken to deciding which teachers in the building they would rather have fired. Disgruntled activists, social critics, or immature kids just venting about their mean high school teachers? You be the judge: click here to view the blog.

I have a few thoughts on this. The teacher in question is a colleague of mine and a member of my department, which makes this a particularly emotional topic for me. I suppose I admire the students for their energy and outrage. Over the last few weeks I've met with every administrator in the building- to no avail- and I half feel like posting a message of support on their board. But I won't. Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, and all of the other social networking sites use their global openness as their draw: all are welcome, and, unless specifically blocked (like Facebook personal pages), all can see. I have to believe that the students who supported their teacher with genuine words of support were happy to have their words out there for the world to see. The righteous indignation of youth can overlook nuances and glaring social realities when those things threaten their way of life. And good for them for their indignation and fire: we all should have more of that. Maybe we all once did.

But the ones that took pot shots at teachers and staff members- sometimes downright nasty shots at that- apparently either were comfortable hiding in the illusory cozy nest that sites like Facebook create, or felt empowered by that same righteous indignation that fueled the others to level a blow at the perceived dead weight within the system. But their attacks, being hidden behind the wall of a social media site, were just that: cowardly attacks on people's lives and reputations. Not unlike Juicy Campus, these attacks were intended to hurt people, all wrapped up behind the guise of helping another. Which is typical for kids, I know, but shouldn't be accepted. And I suppose I need to confront my own presence on the list and what it made me feel. So many of this generation have bought into the digital lullaby of anonymity. But the thing they don't realize is that the adults, the over forty's out there, can see them, do see them, and will someday make judgments about their inherent worth by rendering judgments about their employability, for starts.

Until this generation realizes that the cyber world is not a closed cocoon for their venting, until they begin to feel the true ramifications of their cyber-flaming, then they will never realize why adults will lose respect for them, will judge them, and will hold them accountable for what they say online.

But I suppose at that age they won't care. At eighteen, did I?

RIP John Updike

Sad and sorry news today: John Updike has died at 76. I loved John Updike. He was one of those writers whose work was appealing because it was, on many levels, true. Even though it was older stuff, and his most famous works- the four novel "Rabbit" series- were written in the 60's, 70's and 80's, he still held a freshness that was very appealing. He was unabashedly candid, too, when it came to sex. You always felt like you were getting away with something reading one of his novels, albeit something classy and literary while sexy, too.

For years I tried to figure out how to include Updike in my AP English classes, to no avail. It was his rampant use of sexuality that just did me in. I couldn't get by it, which is ironic. It was this prudishness that his work sought to fight. He probably would have smirked at it and just went on doing what he did best- writing it all down. Another master down...

Perfection Wasted

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market --
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories
packed in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.

John Updike

Hail to the Chief!

An excerpt from today's historic speech:

"America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested, we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back, nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations."

God I'm proud of the country, and scared for Obama, and scared for us all at the same time. Hail to the chief.

You Know You're Old When...

...you have an hour-long conversation with a former student who is now in law school and who just found out he was just published in his school's law review for a four page summary of a case that the California Supreme Court is hearing right now! And then you find out he's submitting a 38 page article to the same magazine. And then you realize it's been six years since he graduated and at that the most he would write as a senior was less than five pages. Oh, how the world changes! I guess it makes me happy to know that he's doing well, but boy do I feel old. The guy on the left is how I feel now :)

Congratulations, Matt! I always knew you were a writer, and I only had to stomp on your Sparknotes once or twice to get you thinking!

It was so nice to hear from him. As teachers it really does you good to keep in touch with the kids that really touch your heart. And, on the purely practical side, you never know when you'll need a good lawyer!

Writing in the Age of Distraction

Cory Doctorow's article, found at http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2009/01/cory-doctorow-writing-in-age-of.html, is a pretty succinct, accurate look at the distractions that inhabit our electronic, plugged in, connected geographies. I can't help but agree with his take on it all. Instead of trying to make the world go away (increasingly more difficult with Twitter- that site's damn addictive!), his advice of dedicating yourself to twenty undisturbed minutes a day is pretty solid. We all can find twenty minutes, right? And twenty minutes of writing is just about as good as any twenty minutes you'll find in life...and I did say just about as good!

Here's to a great weekend filled with twenty minutes of bliss every day!

Twitter

Yeah, so it's late and I just signed up for Twitter. I'm such a dork!

http://twitter.com/brianstumbaugh

Psyched!

I'm psyched because, yes, once again I have changed a website design. This time it's the TechTimes website that I produce for my school. I basically changed it from an old fashioned, text dominated site to a web 2.0, graphically oriented site. In the process, I tried to increase the accessibility features. I broke a long list of links down and put them on grouped pages (tools, documents, blog, etc.) and minimized the text that- honestly- people weren't reading. I've included a thumbnail here, the same one I picked for my webdocs page (self promotion at its best).

I also had to cut down the size of the background image to optimize load times, and had to utilize a java script to work around the fact that older Internet Explorer versions wouldn't show my transparent .pngs correctly. Lots of work, for sure, but I'm very pleased with the results.

Yeah, it's my geekiness on display, I know. But it's still pretty cool.