Kicked in the face: Freshmen claim Judicial Affairs threatened expulsion for creation of Facebook group critical of TA

A Syracuse University student created a Facebook group, adding in three of her friends to criticize an SU professor. The group led to threats of expulsion and other serious consequences last semester after the targeted teacher complained to administrators.

All four students are freshman females who were in the same freshman writing class. About 15 others in the class were also in the Facebook group, the students said, but none of the other students were punished.

No comments were posted on the message board of the Facebook group, which was called ‘Clearly Rachel doesn’t know what she’s doing ever.’ The officer names, including ‘I’d rather eat the hair out of the drain than go to class,’ were immature but tame, the students said.

Juanita Williams, director of the Office of Judicial Affairs, would say nothing about the four girls’ account, a response that would seem to leave the SU community unaware of what happened to these students and what the consequences could be for others who find themselves in a similar situation.



Because of SU departments’ refusal to comment, the account of the incident is based solely on interviews with all four students. They have no paper trail or e-mail trail of their correspondence with Judicial Affairs.

The incident, which ended in one student leaving SU and the others being placed on disciplinary reprimand, highlights the burgeoning nationwide issues in regard to Facebook. Administrators at schools across the nation are struggling to create and implement guidelines about online violations of conduct codes, and students are unsure of the consequences of online behavior beyond the possibility of SU’s Public Safety busting an underage drinking party.

Rachel Collins, an English doctoral student at SU, discovered a group called ‘Clearly Rachel doesn’t know what she’s doing ever’ on Facebook.com, a networking Web site used by many college students. The members of the group were students she taught in her Academic Writing class.

Amanda Seideman, a freshman in The College of Arts and Sciences, created the group. She received an e-mail from the Office of Judicial Affairs informing her that she had a meeting with Williams a few weeks before winter break, she said.

Public Safety Capt. Drew Buske said Collins was the first to contact them.

‘We received a call from a woman who complained about a Facebook group about her,’ Buske said. ‘We passed it on to Judicial Affairs, and once the group was deleted, that was the last we heard of it.’

Collins declined to comment on the incident.

The Judicial Affairs e-mail to Seideman did not mention Facebook or make clear why Williams wanted the meeting, but as soon as it started, she knew she was in serious trouble, she said.

‘I had no idea it was about the group,’ Seideman said. ‘But suddenly I was hearing, ‘You’re going to be made an example of.’ We were being threatened with all of these serious things, and all I could focus on was what the hell I would tell my parents.’

Williams left the room to call in freshmen Colleen Smith, Caitlin Womble and Madison Alpern, friends who coincidently happened to accompany Seideman to Williams’ office for support, Seideman said. At first, the other three students did not know why Williams wanted to speak with them.

Smith, Womble and Alpern were called to Williams’ office because they held ‘officer’ positions in the group, meaning they had titles the other approximately 18 members did not have, Seideman said. The creator of the Facebook group posts the officer positions, and the student names and titles appear under the group descriptions.

‘Juanita Williams said, ‘Oh, good, you’re all here,’ and my heart just sank,’ said Alpern. ‘I guess I realized that people who aren’t students could get on (Facebook), but I never thought about being called in. I didn’t know what to do.’

Alpern’s confusion and fear grew as Williams continued talking, she said. Williams informed the students of several possible consequences: expulsion from SU, suspension, loss of credit for every class taken during the semester and expulsion from the writing program, which would make it impossible for the students to retake Academic Writing and thus impossible to graduate from SU because the class is required for all students, Alpern and Seideman said.

The four students were also expelled from Collins’ class, and none of them was allowed to contact her again.

The students were shocked and frightened, especially because of the possibility of expulsion, said Smith, an education major.

‘The group was one of those things you really kick yourself for later,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t think it would be something to kick us out of school. I knew it was really serious, and it was such a stupid thing. I just felt guilty, and I didn’t know what to think.’

As the students left Williams’ office, people in the Judicial Affairs office were talking about Facebook becoming a national issue. The other students were joking about the incident, Alpern said.

‘The girls were laughing about how we would see our names in newspapers across the nation,’ Alpern said. ‘It was really intimidating.’

Williams declined to comment on the incident.

The students went back to their rooms and wrote several letters during the next 24 hours, Alpern said. She wrote a general letter of apology and letters to Judicial Affairs, Collins and the writing program. The students had to give the letters to Williams because they were not allowed to distribute the letters themselves. Seideman was not allowed to write to Collins.

The students discussed whether they thought expulsion was probable, and Womble expected it, she said.

‘(Williams) said the consequences would be extremely serious, and I took her word for it,’ said Womble, a retail management major. ‘I figured if she said it, she was serious. I was surprised they got a hold of the information, because you don’t think about anyone but students looking on Facebook, but I was definitely not surprised that we could get kicked out for it.’

Seideman’s father called Williams to complain that the incident ‘was not that big of a deal and the punishment was ridiculous,’ Seideman said.

Williams held several meetings with administrators and other SU staff throughout the next few days, and the students were not permitted to attend, Alpern said.

‘It was a lot of waiting around at a bunch of meetings about us that we weren’t invited to,’ she said. ‘We would sit outside Juanita Williams’ room for hours, petrified.’

Alpern, who said she had been unhappy at SU before the Facebook incident, applied to transfer to Drexel University during this time. She had a difficult time sending her transcript because Judicial Affairs had placed an academic hold on each of the students’ accounts, she said.

The four students then met with Margaret Himley, director of undergraduate studies in the writing program. Himley said the staff was very upset by the incident, Seideman said.

Himley did not return several calls for comment. A secretary for Carol Lipson, director of the writing program, said Lipson ‘has nothing to say’ about the incident.

A few days before winter break, Williams again called the students to her office. She informed them that if they made fliers about the dangers of Facebook to be posted around campus, the punishment would be lenient. The students would be placed on probation, and while they were still expelled from Collins’ class, they could meet with a different professor once a week to complete Academic Writing and receive credit.

The students sent their fliers to Williams, but they have not received information about what she will do with them, Seideman said. Smith, Womble and Alpern chose to meet with the professor, but Seideman said she chose to retake the course during another semester.

The four students sent an e-mail to their former classmates who were in the group, telling them to remove themselves from any groups that could be offensive to teachers, Alpern said.

Collins continued to teach the class and never mentioned the incident, said interior design major Alex Wysocki, a member of Collins’ class and the Facebook group.

‘She never said anything, even after the girls were out of the class,’ she said. ‘Everyone knew from the e-mail the girls sent about some of what happened, so it was a little awkward in the class after that. (Collins) didn’t bring up the issue or act mad, but there was always a little bit of tension.’

Shortly after the final meeting with Williams, each student received a letter from Judicial Affairs. The students were placed on disciplinary reprimand until November 2006, which according to the Division of Judicial Affairs Web site is ‘a formal admonition on behalf of the university community and is intended to clearly document in a student’s or student organization’s disciplinary file that his/her/its behavior has been deemed unacceptable.’

If the students commit another violation before November, they will automatically be called in to Judicial Affairs, Smith said.

Womble was upset that it took weeks for the students to find out their punishment, she said.

‘They didn’t need to leave us hanging,’ Womble said. ‘I think everyone deserves a warning, especially freshmen in their first (semester). From all the things they were threatening, I wouldn’t be surprised if some kid jumped off a building after hearing that.’

Both Seideman and Alpern said they were upset by the way the initial meeting was handled. The students were not given a warning, Seideman said.

‘I was very bothered by the way they dealt with it,’ Seideman said. ‘They didn’t tell me why we were getting in trouble, and what we were threatened with was ridiculous. What the group was there for was not to hurt anyone. Yes, it was inappropriate, but it was a joke. I will stand by that.’

Alpern said she was upset that she was threatened with the same consequences as Seideman and was not allowed to make her own case.

‘The (other students) just wanted to know if they could avoid telling their parents, and I just felt horrible about it,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to put blame on someone else, but the creator was in charge of whose names were on there. My entire class was in the group, but no one else got in trouble.’

Womble said she is now much more careful about what information she puts on the Internet, but she thought the administration was quick to make threats.

‘I think everyone deserves a warning,’ she said. ‘What we put on there was stupid and offensive, and I know that now. But (Facebook) is not associated with the school. I question whether they have the right to look at that stuff and call us in. I don’t know if it’s their place.’

When Judicial Affairs first contacted the four students, Wysocki said she was nervous about being punished for her participation but did not think the group was overly offensive.

‘All the group was saying was that we didn’t like the class,’ she said. ‘No one posted messages and we never used the word hate. You can go to Ratemyprofessor.com, which is also nationwide, and you can say all of these horrible things about teachers. But you can’t do it on Facebook. It’s all about boundaries. It’s hard because you run into issues of privacy and freedom of speech, but where do you draw the line?’

Administrators at colleges across the nation are struggling to determine just where that line lies, said Shawn McGuirk, director of Judicial Affairs at Fitchburg State College. McGuirk teaches an online course for administrators on Studentaffairs.com called ‘Facebook.com: Friend or Foe?’ to address these issues and discuss possible solutions.

‘I don’t know if they necessarily need to have a specific policy,’ McGuirk said. ‘But if an institution decides they’re going to use (Facebook), you have to let the students know you’re doing that and that there could be repercussions.’

The novelty of the site has administrators scrambling for answers, and several people have proposed conferences and seminars to determine an appropriate course of action, McGuirk said.

‘I don’t think the difficulty is in the technology,’ he said. ‘It’s a fairly new phenomenon, and campuses are struggling with how to respond because this hasn’t been an issue before.’

McGuirk, who uses a Facebook account, said the site can create a sense of community, but also opens the door to a new breed of student violations.

‘It’s hard to know what to make of it, from an administrator’s perspective,’ he said. ‘And from a school perspective, you love it and hate it. It’s connected to your school, but no one has to approve it. We’re in a little bit of a bind, but we’ve got to accept it: Facebook is not going anywhere. Not anytime soon.’





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