on (not) befriending students on crackbook

Music: R.E.M.: Reckoning (1984)

Today a Facebook friend alerted a number of us that the National Communication Association, one of my professional groups, advanced a press release today. What's usual about the press release is that, first, it's advocating something tacitly political, and second, what it advocates is wrong. Titled, "Why College Students Should 'Friend' Their Instructors on Facebook," the press release sets forth the following argument, based on the research of Jospeh Mazer: instructors should "allow" their students to "friend" them because it makes them more personable and approachable. Aside from the fact the press release is very different from the title of the press release (the title seems to address students, but it's really an exhortation to the teacher), the problem I have with such advocacy is that it puts teachers in danger and asks them to be teachers 24/7 (as if we are not already, but . . . ). The press release warns that

Instructors should be consistent with their self-disclosure on Facebook and their teaching style in the classroom. Instructors who exhibit a relaxed personality on their profiles, via informal photographs and entertaining messages, yet operate the classroom in a strict manner may violate student expectations, resulting in negative effects on students.

In other words, "friending" your students as a teacher widens the zone of professional surveillance, demanding that teachers be "on" not only at the university, but at home in their pajamas dorking around on the computer. As if working 80 hour weeks is not enough.

I have all sorts of trouble (surprise!) with this PR gesture from an organization that I pay hundreds of dollars a year to represent my professional interests. These sort into two piles: representation of the field and the argument. Let me address each in turn.

To my knowledge, NCA is not in the regular habit of advancing press releases, so to have this one brought to my attention invites, perhaps, undue scrutiny. Nevertheless, from a rhetorical vantage it makes sense to want to address a topic like social networking, which is very much on the public screen. Even so, I would have preferred something to be highlighted as "research" that is---er----less obvious. "Being aware of these common interests [music and movie interests] may help students feel more comfortable approaching their instructors with questions or problems." You don't say? I suspect if I took my students out for beer after class it would have much the same effect. I confess I'm rather underwhelmed with this "research"---as I am a host of the work in my field that "discovers" the obvious. I recognize such a statement tempts the heretical (but c'mon, we know there's a lot of stuff out there that numericizes the obvious). I'm only observing that the tail is wagging the dog here, and there is a way to dog PR that actually contributes something new by drawing on innovative and creative social scientific research about the InterTubes. My colleague Jorge Peña, for example, is doing some pretty insightful and fascinating research on impression formation and stereotypes in online environments that taps into the same public screen interests, but which does not conclude the obvious.

Second, and more important to me, is the assumptions of the argument advanced. One of them concerns labor: the release assumes that social interaction with students is not "labor," when in fact it is an extension of work. Interacting with students is what we are presumably paid to do---and the press release is advocating that teachers interact with their students on Facebook---to extend the mission of the classroom into social space. The "warning" of the press release about maintaining the continuity of one's teaching persona between the classroom and Facebook is, basically, asking teachers to continue their "work" into the social domain.

Another problem: such an entreaty contributes to the widening net of surveillance and policing. We have already discussed the "surveillance" problem that Facebook poses to educators on this blog, so I won't retread that discussion. The gist of the immediate retort is that befriending students (as opposed to former students, or recently graduated students) opens teachers to surveillance that extends their professional responsibilities into the gray zone of the social. I can think of at least three instances when a supervisor has commented about a Facebook interaction in a way that bears on professional life (not only mine, but that of others). Nevertheless, instead of focusing on the dangers Facebook friending poses to instructors, let's grant the pedagological thrust behind NCA's news release: student learning and the educational experience.

As an educator in today's environment of "reality television," "sexting," and surveillance-as-entertainment, the boundary separating one's public and professional self from the private and social self is increasingly blurred. If I can borrow an argument from John Sloop, what this boundary-blurring (the hallmark of social networking) ends up doing is rendering the machinations of power invisible. If there's one thing about Geert Hofstede's conception of "power distance" that rings true to the classroom, it's that a degree of perceived inequality contributes to learning, and being aware of that inequality or "distance" between teacher and student is the function of grading, judgment, and so forth. I've been teaching for fourteen years now, and if there's one thing I have learned it's that you cannot be your student's buddy. You can be friendly, approachable, and so forth, but adopting the persona of a buddy can really backfire in the classroom setting---and the danger is proportional to age-distance. The closer you are to your student's age, the more dangerous "buddydom" can be.

When I first started teaching, I recall a teaching evaluation that read, in all caps, something like "SMOKE 'EM UP DUDE!" At the time I thought it was funny, but in retrospect I wonder if this student took anything from the class other than it was a "good time." And I recall some of my most difficult problem students were the one's who asserted we were "equals" and thus I should give them a break. This is especially problematic with psychotic students---something the NCA cited study does not take into account. I need only refer to this unfortunate email I received from a student some years ago, an email that discloses a perceived equality and therefore absence of boundary. Because the student presumed (in his/her deluded mind) that we were equals, and because s/he did not get the grade s/he thought s/he deserved, a letter was sent to the dean and untold problems ensued. Boundary trouble.

What Mazer's research and NCA's press release seem to be promoting is dangerous, especially if one takes note of the disciplinary issues that plague secondary education. Middle- and high schools (at least of the public variety) are now doing the work of parenting, which involves a lot of "no" and "thou shalt not." Talk to any high school teacher and they'll tell you less and less time is spent on teaching and more and more on discipline. Discipline is not abuse (although it can be abusive), and is often wrongly characterized as such ("Another Brick in the Wall"). Rather, discipline often concerns public comportment and the discernment of boundaries. I'm not talking about spanking or being a hard-ass; by discipline I simply mean maintaining a boundary between teacher and student, a boundary that the "buddy" disposition blurs. In college, thankfully, most students have embodied what is and is not appropriate to say and do in the classroom, and I thank the secondary educators for that. But I've noticed that things are changing as adolescence is extending into the 20s---"delayed adolescence" is becoming the norm. It seems to me "friending" students only contributes to the larger, social problem of deferred adulthood. Being an adult, seems to me, is a recognition of boundaries.

Of course, every student is different. Some are more mature than others, and those with strong boundary recognition may be perfectly cool with Facebook friending. As a general rule, however, I think it's best not to be friends on facebook with undergraduates. I would double-underscore this point for graduate student teachers: the rewards may be enhanced learning for SOME students, but the penalty can be much worse.

And to flip back to the problem this poses from the professor's perspective: we can be tempted to cross boundaries too. When an undergraduate attempts to "friend" me on Facebook, I always send the same message (which is something I now "cut-and-paste"). It says, basically, I'm flattered to be asked and I'll gladly add them as a friend after they are graduated and their relationship to the university is officially ended. Most students, once they graduate, don't follow-up on this. I think part of the allure of friending professors has something to do with the leveling of power distance---that is a powerful compulsion. In any event, recently I "friended" an undergraduate who just graduated and who did "follow up" on the friend request. I couldn't resist exploring his/her "profile" photos. You can guess what I found, but suffice it to say this student's alluring photos could appear in a glossy magazine designed to titillate. I couldn't imagine teaching a class having just seen a student in the front row in underwear the night before. Boundaries people. Boundaries.