Ryerson’s Anti-Facebook Stance

I’m sad to say it — my alma mater is anti-social media.

In a well-reported story today, a Ryerson University student was threatened with expulsion for creating a Facebook study group. The claim is that James Norrie, director of the School of Information Technology (a program for which I incidentally used to teach part-time) stated: “this is being painted as a generational issue and it’s not. We are not a bunch of old farts who are afraid of technology,” and goes on to say further that that the university’s code of conduct “calls for us to charge the person who facilitates and enables cheating. We’re trying to educate students on what they can and can’t do. The code is clear that someone who enables others to cheat will receive a severe penalty.”

Here’s the problem Dr. Norrie. I’ve looked at Ryerson’s Student Code of Academic Conduct, Section A1(b) – yes, that would be the section related to cheating – and lo what did I find but this statement under the heading “How to Avoid Cheating”:

Seek help when needed: Using the resources available to you on campus is not a sign of weakness; it is a smart way to gain a learning edge… Talk to some of your classmates about meeting regularly in a study group to discuss lecture material or readings, practice and compare review questions, or figure out difficult problems.

So, on the one hand you are advising students to review and work together to avoid cheating, but then you threaten to expel a student who does exactly this, but just happens to do it online. How is that not an incredible double standard?

I know there are enlightened and non-technophobic members of the Ryerson community, in fact a number of them were our very gracious hosts at Podcamp Toronto just two weeks ago. Unfortunately it appears that the Luddites still control the academic fate of students.

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