Colleges May Be Checking Prospective Students’ Social Media, Denying Admission For Non-PC Posts

Alex Buscemi9 years ago

Freedom of speech is already dead and buried on many college campuses, but now colleges may be denying prospective students entry for non-politically correct social media posts before they even look at their applications.

The University of Central Florida recently purchased a $8,500-per-year contract with a company called SnapTrends, which combs a student body’s social media networks for “cyberbullying” and “potentially volatile situations.” The software was originally intended for marketing purposes, but SnapTrends has started selling its product to elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and now colleges as a “security tool.”

While the service would be a great way to track down an unhinged student tweeting about blowing up the school, Emily Zanotti, a writer for Heat Street, fears that universities may use it to track posts that don’t conform to their standard of political correctness. Imagine a world where a college student is punished for a Facebook status questioning the wage gap (I mean, they’re punished for it now, but in this dystopia, the university is actively seeking out these posts — no screenshot from a pissed off SJW required). Imagine a world where a high school kid is denied entry to his favorite university because she posted an Instagram picture of Donald Trump with the caption “Make America Great Again.” Both posts would qualify as “cyberbullying” to many university administrators.

But even if cyber-bullying is a problem for higher education, how far are schools willing to go—and how far into students’ lives are they willing to look—to enforce their rules of conduct? How many offhand Twitter remarks does one have to make before being designated a threat to the moral order? If students want to “Make America Great Again” —a campus-designated diabolical term if there ever was one —on their Facebook pages, will that now be part of the application process, lest they disrupt SJW-enforced peace and tranquility? It’s not hard to see the negative implications that such a program could have on intellectual diversity and intelligent campus discourse.

If you’ve paid any attention to the way universities have responded to outrage over everything from yoga clubs to General Tso’s chicken in the dining hall, Zanotti’s fears are extremely warranted.

Monty Python’s John Cleese recently compared the PC movement to the Orwell novel “1984.” Well, America, meet your thought police:

Jesus. That red storm-cloud of data mining even looks evil..

[via Heat Street]

Image via YouTube