The Atheist Mama

This morning in The Columbus Dispatch, there’s a story about how Kent is banning their athletes from sites like Myspace and Facebook. University administrators are banning almost 400 athletes. This article is only mentioning the banning of athletes, but not other students.

Athletics Director Laing Kennedy recently told student-athletes they have until Aug. 1 to remove their Facebook profiles, citing a need to protect both their identities and the university’s image.

I’m a bit split on this issue. On one hand, universities are private schools, and the athletes do represent them. On the other hand, this is the first amendment they are dealing with. Gary Daniels is a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.

“There’s no clear connection between their roles as athletes and their use of these Web sites,” Daniels said.

“For the government to say that you can’t engage in First Amendment activities, they better have a really good reason. And saying, ‘I don’t want them to do it’ is not a goodenough reason.”

What do you think about this? How would you feel about OSU [or any other university] taking similar actions? As a parent, how would you feel about your college student having controlled access to the internet?

Cross-posted at weColumbus.

In my last post I talked about the good news that I had. Well, I’ve joined weColumbus as a blogger. I started today.

weColumbus is a site (with a blog) that has all kinds of info about Columbus and everything that’s going on in this happening city. I first found it through Dave’s Beer.

So make sure you check it out, especially if you’re in Ohio!!