Faculty-Student Online Interactions Discouraged

In order to establish and maintain proper boundaries between faculty and students as well as to foster a healthy school environment, the administration introduced a new social media policy Sept. 15 that strongly encourages faculty and staff members not to engage in online social connections with current students.The new guiding principle, after it made its way through the dean of students office and principal’s staff for review, was discussed during the Faculty Agenda Committee meeting before being added to the faculty handbook earlier this month. The new policy states, “because of the uneven power dynamics between employees and students, as well as the potential for miscommunication, adults in the community should not accept or initiate networking linkages that are social in nature or friend requests from/ to current students.”Since there was not yet a guideline in writing for faculty concerning the usage of social media, the administration formed the stance in order to supply guidance for adults on campus. Although categorically banning all social media relationships between current students and faculty was an option, the deans preferred to take a less extreme approach. “We wanted to provide guidance to the faculty while also enabling the teachers to retain the ability to make good judgments about their connection with students, and to always be mindful of appropriate boundaries,” Dean of Faculty Ronald Kim said.Many regarded the newly added guideline as necessary and justifiable; some even felt that such a policy should have been created earlier by the administration.History instructor Clinton Williams said that although faculty members are normally clear about the boundary between faculty and students in social networks, the new policy is necessary because it will allow all faculty members and students to recognize the boundary and help all members of the Academy community to be more cautious online. “Social media is rapidly becoming a part of our society, but before there was nothing really policing, or addressing it,” Williams said. “What we need is some sort of a structure to guide us, and that’s why I think the new policy, or rather the guideline, is helpful because it will make us think more carefully before we friend another student or post something on social networks.”

Others also paid attention to where the reasonable line should be drawn. “I personally prefer not to become friends with students [online] because, as much as I like to have a good relationships with them, I also think it is healthy for both to not share the same social media platform,” modern languages instructor Fermin Perez-Andreu said.Senior Sabrina Ortega-Riek agreed with Perez-Andreu and emphasized that social media interaction between faculty and students may create an unprofessional facade for the Academy. “It makes sense for the Academy to want to maintain distance between the social lives of the students and teachers; sometimes the communication between student and faculty personal lives is too much and can be seen as unprofessional,” Ortega-Riek said.However, many members of the Academy community viewed the guideline put in place last week as excessively strict and overbearing. History instructor Giorgio Secondi, who wrote an opinion editorial regarding the new policy for the Sept. 18 issue of The Exonian, said that guidelines like the new social media policy impedes the fostering of a warm, healthy atmosphere for students and faculty to connect. “It is not by building fences between faculty and students that we will create healthy boundaries and filter out inappropriate exchanges. It is by hiring responsible educators, training them and supporting the work they do with kids,” Secondi said. “We are miscalculating the costs and benefits of this policy. PEA should allow Facebook friendships between faculty and students because we want connections between them—even at the risk of the occasional faculty slip-up.”Others echoed Secondi’s sentiments, specifying the manner in which social media relationships are particularly valuable at institutions like Exeter. “Being part of such a tightly knit community makes our connections with teachers not purely from an academic standpoint; we live with our teachers, so isolating us through social media will hurt our community more than improving our safety,” senior Mariano Montori said.Reverend Robert Thompson, the school minister, agreed with Montori and noted that for some faculty members social networks are sometimes one of the only ways to interact with students. “I don’t have a classroom and I don’t coach any sports, so social networks, primarily Facebook, is one of the ways that I have contact with students, and there are some students whom I have contact that I would not have contact if it weren’t for Facebook,” Thompson said.Senior Nick Diao also said that the new policy contradicts Exeter’s values of transparency. “If Exeter stresses open and free relationships between students and teachers, something akin to genuine friendship, then teachers should absolutely be allowed to be friends with students on Facebook,” he said.For some parents of current Exonians, the guideline also came as an unfavorable surprise. “It puts unnecessary barriers between the faculty and the students,” parent Maria Hicks Lynn said. “Many kids today are most comfortable communicating via social media and so by prohibiting faculty members from being facebook friends with the students it cuts off one of the avenues of communication.”Regarding the future of the policy faculty members showed mixed responses. “I think the administration should have faith that faculty members are going to respectfully de-friend students,” Williams said. “I don’t think they should enforce anything, but rather encourage faculty to move in that direction of gradually de-friending students on social networks.” Kim said that while faculty members and students should be respectful of the new guideline, there is always room for the policy to be amended, because of the rate in which social media transforms.“Social media and its uses evolve so quickly that I have no doubt that we will have more discussions in the future on this topic,” he said.