I don't know that most employers care enough to really search. There's not enough data on who DOESN'T get jobs based on their social networking info. I say that because I spent a few days trying to research it to give info to my students.

The employment-related data instead, is around people who have LOST a job based on what they posted. For example University of Colorado's diversity director was fired for a blog post about how women are dumber than men.

But it's almost impossible to find any tangible info about people who have lost opportunities based on Facebook.

Well, here's the thing: I see tons of postings from people declaring him innocent. Aside from eyewitness testimony, the shell casings were from a gun he used to shoot another person earlier in the night, and he was convicted of that shooting. He may have killed the officer. There is, I think, enough reasonable doubt, and not enough evidence to put him to death.

If you were a relative of the slain police officer and believed that Troy Davis was guilty, how would you feel if the county attorney had not fought for the conviction?

As the aunt of the little boy who was groped in a Market Basket bathroom, I'd like to gut the dude who did it. Fortunately, I'm not in charge of these things. What I believe justice is when it's one of my own isn't necessarily sane or rational. I don't think my country should execute people. Not even the worst people. It's just not fucking civilized. And I like civilization.

What the family believes could be wrong. What the family believes isn't what attorney should be fighting for. It should be justice, right?

Oh yeah, my kids' pages are a mess. I get all guns and drugs and gang stuff, or all promiscuity and pregnancy and babies stuff. But honestly, none of them are going to college. Maaaybe it'll affect job stuff, but it's doubtful. Half their potential employers don't have internet access.

Mostly its function is to confirm what I already knew was going on with them, so, while heartbreaking, it's not surprising. I do intervene periodically, but with about the same frequency that I do in real life, which is to say, only when violence to self or others is implicitly threatened.

If my donors ever took the time to page through my responses, they would probably plotz.

My binge drinking and sleeping around occurred in college for me, too. It was not, however, advertised on social media.

I don't know that most employers care enough to really search.

Yeah, I doubt college admissions officials are spending too much time doing outside research either. If anything, they're overwhelmed by application materials as it is. Do they need further evidence that kids act dumb?

I think my high school years were your college years, re: sleeping around and LOOK AT HOW SEXUALLY NOT REPRESSED I AM WOOHOO. One of my classmates had three children by graduation.

I'm just saying that kids and teens need to be more aware and educated in general on the longevity of the things they or their friends post or write about them on-line.

Of course they should. I wouldn't argue differently. But to say that a kid should wipe their online life to impress a college admissions officer or an employer seems overblown.

Especially in middle and high school, when one day, someone is your best friend and on Monday s/he's dogging you to the whole school.

Different issue. Writing about your own stupidity is very different than anything that can be deemed or construed as bullying, especially since most districts are gun shy about it.

I am certainly not denying that the shit my students post is inappropriate and at times libelous (especially when aimed at me!) and that it would be intelligent to learn a more circumspect presence in the internet world. But I'd also like them to stop cursing constantly (which for my lower socio-economic students is more likely to be a hindrance to getting a job than their online life) and to capitalize the first person nominative pronoun. The latter seems more like a battle I'm willing to fight rather than the former.

I have to be on the radio at 6:40. I should probably go to be so I can be coherent.

I am finishing up my team lineup for our roller derby mixer this weekend.

If you were a relative of the slain police officer and believed that Troy Davis was guilty, how would you feel if the county attorney had not fought for the conviction?

Ginger,

I hope I would want Davis to be in prison for life. More importantly, I would want the actual perpetrator in jail. With respect, it says a lot more about us as a society that we want to kill him than it does about him as a possible murderer. I thought Davis deserved another trial.

There was a chilling study done out of Illinois which said that poor investigations by the police, and problematic prosecutions not only lead to people being on death row who shouldn't have been, but likely cost Illinois (alone) multiple millions of dollars in damage due to the real perpetrators of crime being on the streets and unpunished.

I feel like sometimes I'm veering into GET OFFA MY LAWN territory with social networking schtuff. My concern, the more I think about it, is that she appears to think so little of herself in public.