Last updated: 07/02/08
Cambridge applicants checked-out on Facebook

Facebook: the social utility, the world wide communications database, and now, the undercover detective hotspot. The world-wide phenomenon has recently been at the centre of many scandals, from employee tracks to criminal investigations, they all suggest that publishing your life on the web may not be as private as you may have thought.

Most recently a Cambridge University admissions tutor has admitted he checks up on students applying to his college by browsing their Facebook profiles. Dr Richard Barnes, senior tutor at Emmanuel College, confessed in the college magazine.

“This has been the year in which I joined Facebook,” he wrote.

“I have to confess that I actually joined to see what I was missing and also to check up (discreetly) on applicants for a college position. I had been alerted to the value of this by some of our members in the City.” Cambridge University played down the comment as a “throwaway line”. “You know perfectly well how our admission procedures work,” said a spokesman.

Cambridge, like Oxford, insists it only offers places based on a candidate’s interview performance, academic record and personal statement, outlining their interests and reasons for studying a particular course. Facebook profiles often include personal information such as photos, relationship status and sexuality. But it is possible to ensure these are seen only by friends.

Wes Streeting, the National Union of Students vice-president for education, said Barnes’s comments were “unfortunate, but flippant”.

“I would be quite concerned if it was college policy to check up on applicants through Facebook,” he said. “It is a given that candidates are judged fairly and equally. That wouldn’t be the case if a tutor was using Facebook profiles.”

An Oxford academic said: “I think this is really intrusive and most unreasonable.” Another said: “It would certainly be unacceptable in the case of admissions, where we strive to consider as comparable a data set for all candidates as possible.” But a third said: “It’s fair to check up on applicants in this way. Facebook is public domain material.”
Barnes refused to comment.

This new scandal is certainly not alone in emphasising the risks taken in displaying private lives on the web. Many universities throughout the world are still struggling with the administrative and disciplinary actions relating to this new technology. At a small college in Boston, USA, two pupils were expelled on account of their Facebook profiles, and there have been many instances elsewhere in which student/college relations have been severely damaged because of the site.

The most recent domestic scandal has certainly opened eyes to the dependability of the social utility in protecting individual’s personal information, and although awareness of the risks have been widely publicised, surely we should be asking whether we should be at risk at all.