(How) Does Middlebury Confessional represent the sentiments of midd students in general? Dean Spears voiced concern over the web-site’s implications? Is he justified and how might this change college policy regarding student conduct?
3 thoughts on “Involuntary Communication”
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That Middlebury Confessional can represent the sentiments of Middlebury students can be true. The wide range of responses and uses the site has garnered reflects the diverse personalities of any large group of people. Unfortunately some individuals have utilized the anonymity of the site to slander and gossip about other individuals from an invisible soap box. Although such use does not reflect on students positively, any repression of student expression as part of a code of conduct would justify the intolerance of intolerance. That being said the existing social structure serves to the same purpose. Increased transparency in the site would most likely instigate a return towards “respectable” student behavior
Here is Media Scholar Jason Mittell’s opinion of “confessionals.”
http://justtv.wordpress.com/2008/05/03/anonymity/
Dean Spears has made it clear that this perceived anonymity would be shattered in a case where a comment defies the college’s “verbal conduct policy”
Here is his most recent post on this issue: http://deanofthecollege.wordpress.com/
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