No need to fret over Facebook

When I went abroad last semester, I had a healthy vacation. A healthy vacation, that is, from certain annoying habits that I've cultivated at Penn: pulling all-nighters, eating cafeteria food and, oh yeah, Facebook.com.

The recent panic among students over the arrival of potential employers, professors and university administrators on Facebook illustrates why everyone needs a vacation from the social-networking Web site.

People have begun to take it too seriously and thus fail to realize that, rather than being a recruiting tool, a classroom or a virtual university, it is a Web site created for fun and amusement.

So here's a convenient reality check.

Penn officials have better things to do than comb through the 3.85 million registered Facebook users all day looking for incriminating material. So, contrary to popular myth, there is no risk of alcohol violations being handed down over Facebook by university administrators.

"The Facebook is too vast a universe and too unreliable a source for us to police it," said Michele Goldfarb, director of the Office of Student Conduct. Goldfarb acknowledges that "students deserve to be as ridiculous as they want to be on that Web site," which means that the University's time and resources are better spent on other pursuits.

And unreliable and ridiculous are the perfect words for what happens when millions of people set up online profiles about themselves.

Many people think that if someone says something about himself or herself on Facebook, it must be true. For example, a group of students at Yale University recently posted flyers around the campus with individual and group printouts of Facebook profiles that included allegedly homophobic and misogynistic statements.

I don't know what's more pathetic -- that Yale students have nothing better to do than search Facebook all day for offensive quotes or that they actually took them seriously enough to waste paper on posting them all over campus.

As this example illustrates, many students simply place too much importance or too much credence in their and their friends' online identities.

This is why many fear that potential employers and professors examining their profiles will rescind job offers, change grades or otherwise disadvantage them.

But such fears are completely unfounded.

Throughout the on-campus recruiting process, I had the chance to speak with several recruiters and employees during company visits, and the message was unequivocal: They don't give a damn about your Facebook profile.

And this makes sense. After all, when you applied for your summer jobs, you did not send your resume, cover letter and Facebook profile. Hence, it would be unprofessional for employers to hold your online profile against you in the recruiting process -- unless, of course, one of the employees notices a picture of you having sex with a goat on your profile.

"Its absurd for people to be worried about that," said Anthony Giuliano, a Penn alumnus and first-year analyst at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

In fact, just the opposite may be true. Giuliano recounted how he noticed through Facebook that one of this year's applicants to Lehman Brothers was a member of a Facebook group for one of his former extracurricular activities. He helped her get an interview, and now she has an job offer from the prominent financial-services firm.

So a few pictures of you drinking, general screwing around or funny quotations on your profile will more likely do no more harm than good.

Similarly, professors and teaching assistants probably don't care about the above because they're young enough to remember their undergraduate days and understand that these things are a part of the experience.

That doesn't mean, though, that they won't look at and judge online profiles. Recently, for example, a situation arose in which a Penn official was uncomfortable with the content of a profile of a student who Facebook-friended her. Max Dubin, the president of the InterFraternity Council, was notified and reminded IFC members that profiles are public and that students should exercise caution.

And caution is perhaps the best policy.

Penn administrators realize that the Facebook is not a tool for making impressions on professors and employers. They know that the purpose of the Web site is to have fun and keep in touch, so they take it with a grain of salt.

And so should we.

Cezary Podkul is a junior philosophy major from Franklin Park, Ill. Return of the Salad appears on Tuesdays.

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