THE ROAR NEWS
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1801 HARVEY MITCHELL PKWY. S., COLLEGE STATION, TX 77840 | FRIDAY, OCT. 28, 2016 | VOL. 22 NO. 2 | THEROARNEWS.COM
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Student social media use sparks unofficial teacher policies, discussion, new student responsibilities
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wasn’t good,” Vessel said. “You don’t need to make it personal, just make it about the school game.” Not all students agree with Vessel; junior Phuc Ha maintains an active presence on Twitter during Cougar Love Week and Consol Hate Week, in which Consol and College Station High School students participate in flame wars. He thinks that social media doesn’t always have a large impact. “[My friends] all like it, they laugh, they just come up to me and say ‘Funny tweet last night’ or something,” Ha said. “It’s not like an important part of our conversations, it’s just a little side thing.” Because the tweets are usually directed at CSHS, social media can create rancor amongst students in College Station. “I don’t think it’s created new tensions that weren’t already there,” Ha said. “Some of the tweets they respond to aren’t even offensive, they’re just jokes, and they just come too serious.”
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When a Twitter war started between students at Consol and another school following the Lady Tigers’ soccer playoff game, head coach Stuart Keogh immediately stopped the girls’ soccer bus. “[I] said ‘Hey, this isn’t what we believe in, this isn’t how we act. It’s great that we won, let’s handle it with class and move forward onto our next game,’” Keogh said. “Our soccer players are expected to use social media responsibly and positively. We don’t promote negativity about anybody or any other school.” As such, both women’s and men’s soccer teams have a strict social media policy, which includes not tweeting at all about other schools. “We actually haven’t had to [punish somebody] yet, but if somebody were to break the rule, we’d do what are called three hundred repeats, a type of sprint. It’s one of those for every character in the tweet that is negative
about somebody,” Keogh said. “So it would be a pretty long process if they wrote something very long.” The process is further complicated by the ambiguity of students’ rights and teachers’ responsibility. “Free speech is a tricky topic because just because you have the right to say something doesn’t mean you should,” Keogh said. “While free speech is important, one of our goals in our program is to teach people how to be responsible adults so when they leave, they represent themselves, their families and their school well and that, to me, is super important.” Under Keogh’s direction, soccer player and junior Abbye Vessel thinks that sometimes, Consol students’ social media can discredit the school. “It just kind of reflects that if we can’t win, we’ll just insult them. I remember last year someone did Dirty Dancing, and they photoshopped it and that was funny, but unacceptable is like this year, someone said something along the lines of ‘We’re going to beat Consol,’ but someone responded with ‘At least…’ then followed to say something really personal about them and that
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vi burgess & june jeong editor-in-chief & opinions editor
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