This post goes out to all present and future occupiers of residence halls everywhere: ResLife staff members have Facebook accounts, they watch YouTube, and they know you are posting stupid things on both. If you just hosted a huge party with 126 beer cans in your suite, do not upload the video of you dancing on your homemade stripper pole with a pink boa and beer in hand. I have busted many residents and have not hired RAs based on things I found online about them, especially Facebook.
One morning, about a year ago, custodians found a lounge table, three pumpkins, and an empty keg outside the quad by my apartment. Actually the table was more like a series of splintered pieces of wood and the keg was dented flat. After hearing rumors that a few known troublemakers on the 11th floor had posted their exploits online, I donned my deerstalker hat and began the investigation. I easily found their profiles, which were open to the public, and I queried YouTube, which yielded plenty of evidence proving their involvement in the table/pumpkin case.
What I found was shocking; their blatant disregard for rules and the arrogant attitude evidenced by their brazen posts were annoying to say the least. Their statuses all referenced the broken table and pumpkins. Plus, they had posted on YouTube a nicely edited video of two residents lifting the table, pushing it through an open window, and cackling loudly as it hit the pavement, shattering on impact. The other half of the video was the view from the ground where their roommate was filming the aftermath. Needless to say, when they visited me for a judicial hearing their pathetic denials only lasted a few minutes until they saw the video.
Here is my advice to current and future residents: do not be stupid. First, throwing heavy objects off a high rise building is dangerous and childish. Second, if you choose to be an idiot, do not be stupid enough to post your shenanigans online for me to find. Residents too often think they are well hidden on Facebook and YouTube--their hall director is too old, too square, too busy to check the Internet. Trust me children, we were using the Internet before you could walk. Third, if you are confronted with video proving you broke a policy, do not lie. There is nothing you can say that will convince me it is not you on my computer screen. Social networking has allowed me to not only keep in touch with friends from grad school and family across the country, but it has also granted me the enjoyment of snooping on my troubled residents. Isn't technology grand?
Oh, children. It applies to adults too, when a person is rude to me, I can look at their profiles and usually find that they are looking for a job. Too bad.
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