Facebook helps some schools catch students

When Penn State students rushed the field after a win over Ohio State last year, tracking down those responsible might have seemed impossible.

School officials found an easy solution, though: They rounded up students who were in a Facebook.com group for those who participated, said Tyrone Parham, the school police's assistant director.

While Penn refrains from obtaining student information via the Facebook, some other universities use the popular Web site as an investigative too.

Penn Division of Public Safety officials said the social-networking site is designed for students and therefore not useful in solving ongoing investigations, adding that they don't need to use the Facebook because their police force is adequate to conduct investigations.

At some schools, however, public-safety officers create Facebook accounts and use them to investigate students who may have committed crimes, and the response has been a student outcry.

Princeton University students have initiated online protests of the school's use of the Facebook by "poking" public-safety officials on the site, thereby flooding officials' inboxes.

"We believe that the Facebook is a public document, and students should treat it as such," said Princeton Executive Vice President Mark Burstein, who supervises the institution's public-safety department.

But Alex Lenahan, Princeton's student-government president, said that while he doesn't mind if school officials maintain profiles, he doesn't wish them to use the site against students.

"It wasn't designed to be an investigative tool," he said. "If they want to be responsible citizens of the Facebook and just have a profile like everyone else, that's all right."

Penn Law professor David Rudovsky said that while he isn't aware of any legal implications stemming from universities' officials use of Facebook, they must be careful how they go about it.

For example, he said officials shouldn't depend on the site as a sole source of information.

Officials at schools including Penn State, Georgetown and Stanford universities have also informally admitted to using the Facebook in their investigations.

What makes Princeton different is its formal acknowledgement of the practice.

The school recently issued regulations governing how public-safety officers may use the Facebook. The guidelines forbid officials from posing as students and limit Facebook use to aiding ongoing investigations. Officials may not surf the site for parties and other student-run events in the hopes of finding students doing something wrong.

Penn State, on the other hand, hasn't announced any regulations regarding investigative use of the site.

Parham, the school's police director, said Penn State's police department doesn't use the Facebook for all investigative cases.

"You can't just take the words ... on Facebook for granted," he said. "You can't say that's an admission of crime."

Penn State employs over 100 students in its police department, many of whom have Facebook profiles. The university has 46 officers.

Stanford also has no regulations for police use of the site, but will address the issue at an upcoming forum, Stanford Police Lt. Jon Hernandez said.

"As long as it's public domain, we will use it," he said.

Several institutions plan to convene to discuss Facebook usage at the open forum, to be held at the University of California at Berkeley next month.

Nursing freshman Karen Hansch said that since students control what information they post on the Facebook, officials should have open access to it.

But Hansch added that having public-safety officials selectively search for keywords such as "underage drinking" or "parties" is not acceptable.

College parties "are going to happen whether or not there's a Facebook group about it," she said.

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