It Takes a College

Yesterday I spoke at our state student services conference in LA - "It Takes a College" - and did my iPod Generation speech. It was my first general session so it was a bit nerve-wracking facing such a large audience. I was the only thing standing between them and lunch so I was motivated to keep it lively. No one fell asleep (that I could see), so I think it went OK. Once again, it was a great crowd and I really appreciated the opportunity. It's a topic I really believe in and I hope I started some conversations that will continue on their campuses.

Two young ladies in a graduate program at UCLA spoke with me afterwards and posed a very interesting question regarding liability. If we start interfacing our systems with sites like Facebook or MySpace (which I think is a great idea), how do we ensure our institutions don't become liable for that content? If those students have items on their sites that are unseemly right next to information from our colleges, will that create an association in people's minds that will be unfavorable?

When the producer/consumer model of information is upended, it raises questions that don't necessarily have easy answers. We could just avoid it entirely and stick with our static (AKA boring) web sites that don't really serve students, but that certainly isn't appealing. We are at the beginning stages of an entirely new era of communication and the rules and policies haven't caught up yet.