There was recently an initiative passed by the administration here at Penn State to change the football distribution process from a first come, first server system to a random lottery system. With 100,000 students enrolled statewide, the 22,000 student tickets were definitely not enough to meet the high demand. Last season, scalping was rampant with ticket prices soaring through the roof. I will even admit that I was able to see one ticket (of the $170 season set that I had) for $200. That one ticket made me a profit off of the season package that I bought. So what does all this have to do with social networking? Everything.
The change in the system was announced yesterday in the school paper early yesterday morning on the front page. By the afternoon, protest groups had sprung up all over Facebook (the most popluar social networking site on campus). One that I was invited to had almost 6,000 people in it by 4 PM that afternoon. I opted not to join because I had seen this all before. Everytime something happens on campus that people don’t like, they make a group on Facebook. I felt like it was a waste my time, because who would have thought it would accomplish anything at all. By the early evening several rallys had been organized strictly using Facebook, and scheduled for the next day. The next morning woke up for classes and grabbed a copy of the paper on my way out the door. Low and behold, the ticket system change had been cancelled and would remain the same as last year.
The administration has said that they reversed their decision because of an outpouring of complaints from students. The article in the paper attributed the result to the groups on Facebook that had put pressure on the school, but I keep asking myself how much of a role the groups played? Can Facebook groups really bring about change on a large scale? If it really was the Facebook phenomenon, the University must have feared the rallies that Facebook obviously makes easier to plan. No rallies had actually taken place so I am wondering how the students were outpouring their sentiments directly to the administration. Did the administration only base their decision on the Facebook response? Even more confusing to me, the University reversed their decision in under a day! I have seen students protest outside the administration building (Old Main) and not get the kind of response from Penn State as a few groups on Facebook recieved yesterday. While I agree with the decision made by the administration, you have to wonder what the implications of this are. If simple Facebook groups can change policies in our major universities, what is next in the reform process? Most of the Facebook users don’t even read the entire group description before joining, and I don’t understand how anyone can justify measuring public sentiment through the network. Penn State, AT LEAST wait for the students to actually show up next time!
If we want to examine this further, how does this tie into what occurred at Digg recently? Is the internet becoming a powerful form of protest, and is this a good thing? We need to stop for a moment and consider the road we appear to be going down. Mob rule on the internet?
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