You may not have received the memo, but Facebook is keeping track of what you say regarding the 2012 presidential campaign.

Facebook announced, “Every post and comment both public and private – by a U.S. user that mentions a presidential candidate’s name will be fed through a sentiment analysis tool that spits out anonymized measures of the general U.S. Facebook population,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union’s Blog of Rights.

This information, along with reader polls, is being shared with Politico.com to gather opinions of Facebook users regarding the presidential campaign.

“My initial reactions are, ‘Are you serious? They’re going to be searching through my private posts to find political sentiment?’ And then I realized I don’t even know what I agreed to when I clicked that I agreed [with] the Terms of Service,” said Patrick Fischl (sr).

Fischl said he doesn’t post political opinions on his own profile. He said he has been willing to chime in with his opinions on other users’ profiles, but the recent privacy changes will affect his readiness to do so.

“I’m sure it’s some animated computer program they have running, but it still seems kind of creepy to me,” said Fischl.

Erik Fisher, Indiana Wesleyan University’s social media manager, said that since all the information ends up anonymous, he doesn’t have much of a problem with the study.

“If I were to say I was pro or against any certain candidate, it’s not going to say that it’s attributed to [me], so I didn’t really have a problem with it, per se,” said Fisher.

Hannah Pate (sr) and Zach Roth (so) voiced their lack of trust of Facebook and questioned why a wider announcement wasn’t made.

“What are the motives here? Why did you not tell your users? What are you hiding?” asked Pate.

“If it’s innocent, why shouldn’t they tell them?” asked Roth.

Fisher said it’s Facebook’s responsibility to inform its users of privacy changes.

“When it comes to major decisions like that, even though it’s going to become an anonymized thing, Facebook should give notice to their users as to what they’re doing,” said Fisher.

Fisher predicts that there will be a variety of reactions to the new policy.

“I think there will be some people who will be scared and maybe be angry with Facebook for choosing to do that. Others will probably see that it’s anonymous and not care either way. And there’s probably a third instance where these are people who don’t care about politics at all, and it doesn’t affect them,” said Fisher.

Both Roth and Pate said the tracking won’t affect what they post on Facebook.

“It doesn’t really scare me. I don’t care. I’m going to say what I believe and use Facebook as a tool to educate people about the mistaken privacy laws of Facebook,” said Roth.

“I don’t care if they track me or not,” said Pate. “It’s not going to change my opinion.”

Roth explained that trying to navigate and understand terms of service of social networks is often a lost cause.

“It’s confusing as laws are, so that makes it permissible for just about anything. And it’s like the length of the Bible,” said Roth.

“Even when we sign our housing form for IWU, the lifestyle agreement that we sign, that’s the exact same thing as user agreements. I doubt anyone ever reads that whole thing. We don’t know what we’re being held accountable [for] and what we’re putting ourselves in the way of,” said Fischl. “With IWU, I’m sure there’s a lot of students who don’t know what rules they are breaking because they don’t read that user agreement.”

As of Nov. 21, parents of students attending Indiana Wesleyan University have a new Facebook group to join.

Less than two weeks after opening, the Facebook group “IWU Parent Connection” has more than 330 members. This is a place for students’ parents to come and learn about things going on at IWU. They have an opportunity to ask questions and get feedback from Dr. Brandon Hill, the assistant dean for student engagement, as well as other faculty and staff members.

“One of the things we’ve realized is that most of our students share that their parents are their number-one advice-givers, so we’ve realized that we need to have a place where parents can find out information, so when they’re giving advice, that they are sharing the right things with their students,” said Hill. “It’s a place where parents can ask questions and we can answer it offline of where the students are.”

The parent response to the group was positive within 24 hours of the groups launch. An email to IWU parents said the group was “designed as a community specifically for the parents of students at Indiana Wesleyan University. Ask questions, network with other parents, and stay connected to the IWU family!” The email also included a link to the site so parents could easily gain access to the site.

IWU mother Cindy Ketcham was pleased with the new connection to information regarding her son’s schooling.

“I think it’s a wonderful opportunity for parents to have a voice, a place to ask questions,” Ketcham said. “I think parents could have a voice if the administration, as they’re participating in this, will learn more about the concerns and issues and the holes that might exist in information.”

The feedback from the site has been positive, and Hill said the school is working on more ways to involve parents.

“Basically we are working on a website for parents to find out information, and we’re also going to be working on parent newsletters,” said Hill.

While the website is still in progress, parents can turn to Facebook to find information they need regarding their children’s education.

Students at Indiana Wesleyan University have a new favorite pastime: listening to others’ conversations.

“Overheard at IWU,” a Facebook group that allows members to post funny quotes they hear on IWU’s campus, has gained a large following over the two semesters of its existence. Rob Clarkson (sr) founded the group last spring after he transferred from Biola University in California.

“There was a Facebook group by the name of ‘Overheard at Biola,’” said Clarkson. “It is not an original idea … and I’m not afraid to tell them that it wasn’t my idea.”

The group boasts more than 1,900 members, all of whom have the power to post and comment on various conversations overheard on campus.

“The first two weeks of [this] school year, it went from 200 or 300 to well over 700,” Clarkson said.

“It’s funny to go on there and see what people are saying on campus,” said Cody Ingle (so), who joined the group within days of its launch. “I usually get a good laugh out of it.”

Jenn Goethel (jr) had a different experience with “Overheard at IWU.”

“Originally it was really, really funny with random stuff,” Goethel said. “[Now] it’s like everyone is just posting stuff, and it’s too personal.”

This is one of the issues Clarkson and six of his friends, who are the administrators of the page, are hoping to prevent. The seven students are responsible for monitoring the posts and comments in regard to the groups’ established rules.

“Recently, we inducted a huge set of rules for how administrators should go about enforcing the rules,” Clarkson said.

The rules Clarkson and company created prohibit members from posting obscene, “deliberately controversial,” or aggressive comments. Other rules require decent grammar and truly funny posts.

But even with posted rules of conduct there is still some controversy over deleted posts.

“Now we have a process where we either comment or message the people individually,” he said. “[We say,] ‘This is why your post was deleted, if you disagree please tell me because we may allow you to re-post it if your argument is good enough.’ We’re [just] trying to keep it IWU-friendly and not let it get out of control.”

“It could potentially always turn into something bad,” said Ingle, who thinks having administrators on “Overheard at IWU” is necessary.

“We all remember Like-a-Little,” Clarkson said, referencing the anonymous social networking site that encouraged students to post flirtatious comments about those on their college campus. IWU blocked the site in spring 2011 after a rash of posts considered inappropriate by some administrators and students. “We’re trying to prevent it from being that.”

And with the group’s recent growth, its administrators have begun creating video newscasts that highlight some of the posts on “Overheard,” something Clarkson said has changed the way he and the other administrators are seen on campus.

“[Now] when we’re walking around people recognize us as ‘the overheard guys,’” Clarkson said. “That’s opened a lot of doors.”
In the end, “Overheard at IWU” is just a fun way to poke fun at things on campus.

Clarkson said, “My favorite part has been seeing this goofier side of IWU students, seeing the people that push the envelope without being offensive.”