Talking Stick - September/October 2015 - 59

LSU res life's online presence. I and my
assistant director are on social channels
all day and respond within 24 hours.
Like Mallory said, that response
time is often within the hour or two as
people (especially incoming students)
expect near immediate two-way
communication from entities they
reach out to via social media. (Okay,
unless I'm asleep; then they don't get a
response until morning!) It's the new
customer service.
Also, as Janine said, we have
Hootsuite searches set up for routine
monitoring, from our official res hall
names to words incoming students are
more likely to use like "LSU dorm" or
slang names for our halls. We'll also
add event-specific terms and hashtags
to our monitoring as needed. For
example, if there's a fire in a building
or a situation of concern, we monitor
the student-created hashtags and
conversations to identify anything we
need to pass along to our res life & ed
team, or beyond (police, students of
concern team, etc.)

Quinn: When issues are brought to
our attention, we do respond, typically
through the student code of conduct.
For example, if a student violates a
policy (e.g., posts a photo of themselves
consuming alcohol in a residence hall),
we would adjudicate the case as we
would any other alcohol case and use
the photo(s) to assist with our education
conversation and creative sanctioning.
Additionally, if we are unable to
determine who was responsible for
particular posts, the university has still
responded. For example, last year there
were multiple inappropriate YikYak
posts and we could not determine
who the author was; the vice president
of student affairs sent out an email
calling attention to the matter in an
educational and developmental way.
While each department is responsible
for monitoring their own social network
channels, the division does monitor
various university feeds and relays
relevant posts to each area mentioned.

TS: What was one occasion where
these guidelines proved useful or, on
the other hand, made you wish you had
them?

McGee: I'm very glad that we have
guidelines in place. They allow our
student and graduate staff to hand
off certain situations that should
be handled by others such as the
assignments, conduct, or maintenance
staffs.
We had a campus situation that
spiraled very rapidly last fall, and
having this policy in place allowed us to
maintain consistent messaging during
a hectic time.

Tucker: I feel it is most helpful in
crisis situations because everyone is
used to the main channels handling
the situation and alerting us to what's
out there.
Sidarous: The policy and our guidelines
for staff are a great foundation for our
training, content creation, and more. I
can also point back to the policy when
students or staff want to start a new
page, group, Twitter handle, etc. The
policy walks through why we use social
media, what we hope to accomplish,
etc., and those are often questions others
don't automatically ask when they just
want to join the next new social media
craze. Our policy supports what I believe
are best practices for social media and
communication.
We (knock on wood!) have not had
many negative experiences with our
social media accounts thus far.

David: I agree with Mallory that our
spoken guidelines - soon to be written
policy - have helped us navigate
through why we do what we do and
to narrow the scope of work rather
than jumping on every new platform
available. It has also made sure that
all situations that needed our official
res life voice to take control of the
messaging would hear us.
We've had several events

- hurricanes, bomb threat, student
death, tornado warnings - that all
went smoothly in social media because
student and professional staff deferred
to our main res life and main LSU
accounts to push out information,
and they just helped disperse those
messages.

Sidarous: I notice a running theme
through this conversation about staff
training. It really is so important for all
staff to understand how to respond to
social media requests, understand the
best practices, and know when to move
something up the ladder. I believe we
are still perfecting what the training
looks like for us, but we have a good
foundation.

Quinn: I would add that our student
code of conduct has helped us to
enforce policy violations seen on social
media. Students often believe that if
they post something online, we should
not have any jurisdiction to process the
incident through community standards
because it is "their" private profile.
What I often tell students is the truth:
that their profiles are not private. There
is no such thing as privacy on the
Internet; all of their profiles are public
information for anyone to consume.
What happens online, or what is posted
online, does not make them immune
to the consequences of their actions.
This seems to help students reframe
the way they use social media beyond
a purely social level and helps them
understand how what they choose to
post online can both positively and
negatively impact their success as a
student leader and future job candidate.
A great resource for both students and
educators is the book What Happens
on Campus Stays on YouTube: The New
Rules for Your Reputation on Campus,
Online, and Beyond by Erik Qualman
(@EQualman). ■
Watch for the new ACUHO-I Social Media
and Student Engagement online course
coming soon.

SEPTEMBER + OCTOBER 2015

59
Talking Stick - September/October 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Talking Stick - September/October 2015
