Does Online Technology Harm Communication On Campus?

Inside Higher Education provides a thought-provoking article examining the ways online technology may be harming free speech and debate on college campuses.

Though the Internet is often viewed as a place where anyone gets the chance to be heard, one professor thinks this isn't enough, and may in fact be harmful.

As a professor myself, I'm always intrigued when the issue of exchanging views and knowledge is brought up, as I consider this to be the ' true' value of a higher education.

I'll be the first to admit that the Internet has proven to be an incredibly democratizing tool in higher education. Typewriters, mimeograph machines, floppy disks (the real ones) – to me they're the stuff of legend. Yet I've gotten to wondering if a few recent campus incidents haven't revealed a disturbing problem in the way technology has changed the way we communicate in academe.

At the same time, it's hard not to notice that for many students and faculty members, the Web also provides an open environment to bash, belittle and bemoan. Trivial? Not so much when students utilize these tools to bypass their college communities and create a wholly unproductive debate on some hot-button social topics. The fact that the discussion on these issues has been essentially outsourced to the Internet is, frankly, somewhat troublesome.

Now, there's nothing wrong with expressing your opinion online. But something gets lost when students decide to drum up support against a campus organization out in cyberspace.

The American college campus has been, at its very core, a site for the exchange of views and knowledge – a utopia for the promotion free expression. Thus, it's all the more reason, first and foremost, to keep the debate on campus and in person instead of relegating it to the relative ambiguity of the Internet.

By using the Web as the primary vehicle to drive their arguments, [students] created combative situations that never stood a chance of being heard fairly, equally, and productively from all parties involved. Sure, they expressed their opinions, but this is less abOUT freedom of expression and more about how we communicate with one another responsibly.

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