Fay Assembly Generates Social Media Debate

This past Tuesday, Julia Fay, a partner at the Shipman Goodwin law firm and adjunct professor at Quinnipiac University School of Law, spoke at Assembly to give Exonians a glimpse into the effects of cyber bullying on campus.

In light of the Assembly, all students met with their advisee groups during Wednesday’s Advisery Block to discuss the proper and appropriate social media usage on campus.

According to Dean of Residential Life AJ Cosgrove, he and Melissa Mischke, dean of students, "heard [Fay] speak at a conference and felt that she would connect well with our community." After listening to Fay’s talk, both Cosgrove and Mischke felt it would be helpful and appropriate for students to listen to Fay after the misuse of the media app Yik Yak last spring.

"After the unacceptable behavior last spring with Yik Yak, and how unsettling it was for the entire community and harmful it was for a lot of people directly, [the Administration] felt that we had the responsibility to start open conversations about social media use: how to treat each other well, and how to change our culture if we’re not doing a good job in that area," Mischke said. "That’s why we brought a speaker."

Cosgrove said that he hopes Fay’s assembly will generate extensive discussions about social media among the Academy community members.

"We hope this will be the beginning of conversations between students and between students and faculty regarding appropriate social media use and good decision making," he said.

In the Assembly, Fay touched upon various topics regarding social media, including bystander responsibility and resiliency towards cyber bullying.

Fay emphasized that social media is neither an unnecessary nor a harmful aspect of campus cultures, but rather a facet students and faculty both need to learn how to use appropriately and respectfully. She added, however, that the consequences of the misuse of social media are often times graver than expected.

"In terms of [social media’s] impact on school culture, there are clear positives and negatives," Fay said. "There is the positive of being connected, sharing information and successes and celebrating all that is good. The downside of social media is that it is the form of messages that are communicated more quickly to a broader audience, so if they are negative messages, or have the potential to bring negative impact, the impact and the spread of the information is so much more devastating."

History instructor Betty Luther-Hillman said that Fay’s thought-provoking talk will be beneficial to not only students but to faculty as well.

"I left her talk wondering about the reasons why individuals choose to say or do hateful things via social media; what is the psychology that inspires people to do mean or unflattering things when they think that no one is paying attention or that their identities won't be known? [She] provided a great message against using social media for bad purposes, but begged the question of why individuals choose to use social media in this way in the first place," Luther-Hillman said.

English instructor Michelle Dionne said that after listening to Fay’s talk, she felt that faculty should not attempt to control how students use social media.

"Because social media abuses take place far from adult eyes, the issue for the school is not how to police this stuff but rather how to empower young people," Dionne said. "I don’t mean empower the way the media itself ‘empowers’—meaning it gives people the power to grab the fun and run. I mean we need to empower individuals with a greater understanding of the value of human dignity and the skills to push back against the forces that abuse and degrade our humanity."

"...We need to empower individuals with a greater understanding of the value of human dignity and the skills to push back against the forces that abuse and degrade our humanity."

Dionne added that she found Fay’s decision to address the increasingly common fad of "sexting" during the Assembly intriguing. Dionne expressed her concerns about sexting becoming more and more normalized on campus as well as the broader youth culture.

"I worry about girls who don’t want to, but who end up ‘consenting’ to the new normal—a normal that degrades them, once again, to sexual objects—because they don’t know how to push back," Dionne said.

English instructor Christine Knapp said that she and a few fellow colleagues watched a British documentary titled "In Real Life" in preparation for Fay’s visit to the Academy. She expressed that she felt relatively unaware about social media usage prior to watching the film.

"To be honest, the online life of teens is a bit of a mystery to me," Knapp said.

"As a teacher I am concerned about how the Internet trains our minds to work in a way that may oppose sustained reading and deep thought."

English instructor Barbara Desmond said that the Assembly "will get people talking." She felt that there is insufficient education of cyber bullying for faculty and that although students may discuss it among themselves, faculty rarely talk about the issues of social media.

"I can’t really educate students about it because I don’t know much about it myself," Desmond said.

Students responded to the Assembly with mixed sentiments. Lower Katelyn Babcock said that she benefited from Fay’s perspective as an attorney.

"We hear it a lot from parents and teachers but this was from someone who has had a firsthand view of the consequences," Babcock said.

Unlike Babcock, lower Robyn Stewart said that the very idea of adults speaking to students about social media, a facet of today’s culture that students are more familiar with than adults, seems ridiculous.

"I don’t know if people took her seriously because it's always weird hearing adults talk about our realm," Stewart said.

Regardless of how students perceived Fay’s Assembly, Mischke said that she hopes students will be more conscious and discreet on social media.

"I’m hoping students will walk away with a little bit of thought of how to use social media," Mischke said.

"I hope students will pause before they post that picture of them drinking at a party, or pause before writing that nasty comment on Twitter about a friend."