A Gratuitous ‘Experiment’ in Censorship? Harrisburg U. Bans Social Networking for a Week
If someone were to come to you with an earnest proposal to have the government temporarily censor the Internet so that people could have the shared experience of going without it (an experience otherwise known as the entirety of human history before about 1995), what would you say? The vast majority of people would probably say some variation of this: “What a stupid idea. Please go away.” Unfortunately, none of this group appears to be in charge at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Pennsylvania, where the response was very different: “How does the week of September 13th sound?”
Indeed, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Harrisburg University has decided to block Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and AOL Instant Messenger from university network connections for the duration of the week in order to give students, faculty, and staff a “shared experience” that will allow them to “see how they can use social media in a more positive and efficient way.” Apparently the inefficiency (huh?) and dearth of “positivity” on social media sites is keeping administrators at Harrisburg University up at night.
Don’t call it censorship, though! Eric D. Darr, Harrisburg’s executive vice president and provost, says it’s not: “We’re not denying students, staff, and faculty the right to connect to Facebook since the university network is only one avenue to get to these sites,” he said. “They can drive down the road to a place with wireless if they really want.”
As exercises in censorship go, this is not exactly North Korean in its ambition. But the lack of awareness of the nature of censorship that Darr’s comment displays is stunning. Darr is right that they are “only” censoring the university network. But that makes it no less a form of censorship — it simply means that the amount of effort one must go to to see the things the authorities would like you not to see is less. By this logic, China and Iran are not engaging in “censorship” by blocking politically unacceptable websites because Chinese people and Iranians can always travel to another place where those sites are not blocked, like the United States (well, the part of the United States that is not on the campus of Harrisburg University, anyway). Information has always gotten out in spite of censorship. Soviet dissidents used the “samizdat” system that involved making copies of forbidden documents by hand and passing them along , since copy machines and printing presses were strictly regulated by the KGB. More recently, Iranians used Twitter to subvert their regime’s censorship. (Ironically, this will not be an option for dissidents at Harrisburg University.)
The scale and general “evilness” of these efforts at censorship is obviously vastly different. But they all share the same goal: Harrisburg University, along with the Politburo and the Iranian ayatollahs, all believe that their censorship is justified for the betterment of those being censored. Whether it is preventing the undermining of International Socialism, curbing un-Islamic activity, or creating a student body that is more efficient and positive in its use of social media, censors always tell you they have your best interests at heart.
But do they? Harrisburg University admits that its Internet blocking is easily skirted. After all, students can go off campus to a place with wireless Internet, or use their smartphones to access these social networks. This makes the censorship attempt more of an annoyance than a real prohibition. Yet since the point of the exercise is to give students a shared experience in deprivation, it stands to reason that if Harrisburg University could figure out a way to block smartphones and outside wi-fi access, it would do so. That would make the experiment less of an annoyance and more of a real experiment. But the fact that the prohibition can be easily skirted is how the university is avoiding calling the blocking “censorship” in the first place! Indeed, with the experiment in full swing for nearly a week, the university is finding that students seem more annoyed or challenged by the restrictions than enlightened.
So what was the point, exactly? The real key to Harrisburg University’s decision can most likely be found in Vice President Darr’s statement that the purpose of the blackout is to help “students see how they can use social media in a more positive and efficient way.” A concern for “efficiency” in social media is new to me, but attempts to make what students say on social media sites more positive are nothing new. All the way back in 2005, a student at the University of Central Florida was charged with “harassment” of the “personal abuse” variety for starting a Facebook group about a student government candidate he didn’t like. The group was called (gasp!) “Victor Perez is a Jerk and a Fool.” And just last March, the University of Chicago Police censored a student’s joking Facebook post that he had a dream about assassinating University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer (co-author of the controversial book The Israel Lobby) “for a secret Israeli organization.” Colleges are even buying software to robotically monitor the Facebook posts of their students (just athletes, for now, as far as we know).
The Internet has made amazing forms of communication possible, and it was perhaps inevitable that established authorities (like those who run our colleges and universities) would be uncomfortable with it for a variety of different reasons. However, simply because communication has become faster, more colloquial, and nearly omnipresent thanks to social networks is no reason to abandon the traditional American principles that have guaranteed us an open society in which the government does not dictate what citizens may see or say, online or off. Harrisburg University would be wise to concentrate on educating its students rather than cordon off part of the Internet in an ill-considered and ultimately doomed attempt to get students to be nicer to each other online.
How can they ban it? Coffee houses have hot spots, students have wireless connections. Whose phone can’t text or do web connections?
This is a dumb article. Sometimes the act is just what it is. Perhaps the University was merely engaged in letting students see what the world was like prior to the web. I think it was a good exercise.
It’s an interesting idea. It’s amazing to me how much the Web has changed our lives. I doubt I can go more than a day or two without it, and I was well into my adult years before we all hooked up to the net.
My teenage niece and nephew can’t believe there was a time when your phone was 1. Attached to the wall with a cord and 2. Only used to call people!
Dittos. The college has the right to shut down the network for a week since its their network.
You have the right to say what you want but you don’t have the right to a printing press.
And, btw, there doesn’t seem to be anything insidious about the college’s reasoning. Shutting it for a week is not the same as shutting it permanently.
Ha! Leftist administrators are censoring leftist professors and leftist students on a leftist college campus. Great! Where’s the howls of censorism. The gnashing of teeth-the cries of “vast right wing conspiracy”…How’s that progressivism working out for you, numbnuts.
What an utterly ridiculous article, especially coming out of Pajamas Media which rarely exposes it readers to such ignorant (and may I say) typical leftist ideology. This is a university experimenting to see whether banning of activities which isolate people will enhance actual social networking as opposed to detracting from it. Of course students can utilize these same facilities in town but the point is they they will have to make a special effort to do so. Maybe some students will discover how “addicted” they are to their current comforts. It might even be of use to ban the use of computers on campus. Too radical, I suppose.
Thank goodness that Harrisburg is censoring the internet for students. The poor fools are too stupid to use it on their own. Why can’t the government start doing this kind of thing for the rest of us? Ask yourself, should Robert and tdiinva be allowed to post comments? I think not. Obama save us from them!
Another example of what I told my students over my 30+ yrs of teaching high school science (mostly for college prep kids)…50% of the value of going to college was to show potential employers that you can handle all the BS they put in your way and succeed in spite of it! The other half was you were capable of learning and that you could learn what your future employer would teach you when you went to work for them. Just another obstacle in a 4 year obstacle course we have learned to call “college”.
A more positive possibility–”forcing” them to actually have face to face conversations? How novel in the year 2010, the time of electronic hook-ups and breakups! One wouldn’t really want to face emotions in person would they?? (wink-wink) How gut wrenching!
Are Friday afternoon posts more sarcastic, I wonder? Or honest? just a passing thought
The Harrisburg University of Science and Technology administrators have revealed themselves as technologically backward.
Social media is a fundamental shift in the way we communicate, ask and answer questions, and make decisions. Blocking access is no different than chaining shut the doors of the library.
More here:
http://blog.businessbloggingpros.com/2010/09/a-week-without-facebook.html
In response to those who say it’s no big deal that the university blocked access to social media websites, please be aware that Harrisburg University of Science and Technology is a public university and that that network therefore ultimately belongs to the taxpayers. What we have, then, is a government agency (the university) shutting down access to certain businesses’ websites on a taxpayer-funded network at an institution that is supposed to be a free marketplace of ideas. It’s not just a run-of-the-mill government office full of easily distracted employees.
If an experiment was necessary, why not ask students to volunteer, like we would with every single other experiment conducted on campus? Should the government have the ability to “experiment” on its constituents at will? Should a university?
Did you conveniently leave out Conservatives and Feminists baning pornography? Control is hardly a ideological monopoly.
Is that similar to colleges and universities banning certain types of free speech, or certain speakers to satisfy special interest or religious (Muslim) groups on campus? I don’t think so. Most colleges and universities receive public funds. Conservatives and feminists are special interest groups allowed to lobby against pornography on the internet or anywhere else and are funded through donations. It’s also much different than Islamists threatening to and actually killing people for showing images of Mohammed in print or speaking against their religion.
The students are paying for this network access through their tuition, so they should have free access to social networking sites.
Seems to me that somebody noticed that the Ground Zero Mosque controversy and the 9-11 memorial posts circulating throughout the web might have gotten some students to start thinking about who their real enemies are. That is unacceptable to the tranzi-progressive/jihadi convergence that rules American academia, so they had to try to put the brakes on student social networking – in other words, stifle legitimate political speech – before this gets out of hand.