Addressing Social Media Controversy – On-Demand Training

When Posts from Students, Faculty and Staff Go Viral

Students, faculty, and staff frequently communicate on and through various social media applications and platforms. Often, their posts prompt backlash and complaints to university officials, and in some cases, prompt external threats directed at the individual who made the original post. Administrators are forced to evaluate a controversial post and determine the appropriate response.

You’ll hear our expert presenter – Dr. Allen Groves, Senior Vice President for the Student Experience, the chief student affairs officer of the University  – explore the following during this online training experience: 

• What role do intuitional policies around harassment, bias, threatening conduct, and free expression/academic freedom play? 
• What strategies should institutions employ when a post is alleged to violate university policies? 
• What actions should universities take to protect students/faculty/staff who are targeted with threats after making a controversial post? 
• How should academic freedom be defined in practice? 
• When should the institution use its own voice? 

Our seasoned expert presenter will answer these questions, provide actionable takeaways on dealing with controversial social media posts by campus community members, and offer a clearer understanding of threat assessment protocols and how/when to best employ them. He will use illustrative cases to demonstrate various scenarios in which this problem can arise and how to properly interpret and apply these key university policies under pressure from internal and external constituents. 

Topics Covered

Get crucial, actionable takeaways that will help you:

• Recognize how the content of social media posts may implicate your institution’s anti-harassment, anti-bias, and other policies or federal requirements around non-discrimination, including when it intersects with Title VI and Title IX. 
• Understand the scope and limits of academic freedom and free expression in circumstances in which a controversial social media post is alleged to violate a key institutional policy or create a hostile environment for certain groups – successfully make the necessary distinction in some cases between defense of expressive rights and defense of the content of the expression.
• Assess how best to respond when the individual who made the controversial social media post becomes the target of threats, online harassment, or demands employment termination or student disciplinary action.
• Know your own policies and key federal requirements around campus climate and anti-harassment – develop or refine existing policies to better reflect the current experience with online communication and social media posts.
• Develop a decision framework for determining when to use the institution’s own voice in such situations. 
  

Presenter

Allen Groves serves Syracuse University as Senior Vice President for the Student Experience, the Chief Student Experience Officer of the University.
Click here for full bio.