Public Opinion

A response to Working in/at Public

On the first day of pre-season all of the fall athletes had a mandatory meeting about conduct and the NCAA. It went over all of the things you could not do as a student athlete like do drugs, take money or special treatment from someone, and never letting your credits fall below 12. But one of the things I found most interesting was how we were told to run our social media accounts. "Be careful of what you post. Every year I have a situation where a student posts something questionable on their social media account, and must be reprimanded." 

Just like the professor at Wisconsin, student athletes are held to higher standards. Normal students are never told that their institution may punish them for posting a drunk selfie on their Instagram or having a nude photo of them floating around. But because NCAA has higher standards, those who play NCAA sports are expected to be near perfect. 

Social media brings a lot of restraints to those who are in a sort of limelight. Expressing your opinion on politics and religion becomes frowned upon and even punishable. While there are differences between professors and student athletes the difficulty remains the same. Are overlying institutions taking away the freedom of speech for those who are within the system? It seems everyday someone is getting in trouble for something posted on a Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram account; seemingly making social media an unsafe place for those with an opinion or a lapse in judgement. While it is necessary to have some online patrolling happening, I think that it should be limited to online bullying and not necessarily someone's wrong opinion.