Remark highlights problems faced by educators on Facebook

05.02.2009
Be careful what you post on social networks. Dartmouth professor Reiko Ohnuma learned that lesson the hard way when a student visited her semi-public Facebook profile, took a screenshot, and posted it to the school newspaper's blog.

reports that the professor had posted the following on her profile:

"I feel like such a fraud," she wrote. "Do you think dartmouth parents would be upset about paying [US]$40,000 a year for their children to go here if they knew that certain professors were looking up stuff on Wikipedia and asking for advice from their Facebook friends on the night before the lecture?"

As if that wasn't bad enough, she also wrote:

"Some day, when i am chair, we're all going to JOG IN PLACE throughout the meeting. this should knock out at least half of the faculty within 10 minutes (especially the blowhards) & then the meeting can be ended in a timely manner."

Professors, at least most of them, are not celebrities or politicians, but they are in a very public-facing profession.