WWU

By Gina Cole

To use a metaphor that sports writers may jibe me for: some of my peers at Western Washington University seem to view college not as the season opener to adult life, but as merely a scrimmage. “Sure, we’re doing the same things, but they don’t affect our record right now.”

It sounds implausible that members of the digital generation who document their lives on social networks would delude themselves that way. But let’s forget about Facebook’s bottomless memory and humor them for a moment, because they almost had a major impact on our school’s interpretation of the First Amendment.

On Oct. 26, the Student Senate at Western introduced a resolution that would have allowed sources to back-edit Western publications’ content. It proposed that students or alumni featured in a publication could, one to 10 years later, tell the publication to delete the content and wipe it from the online archives.

I’m guessing most people reading this are journalists. While you folks pick your jaws up off the floor or try to control your incredulous laughter, I’ll explain the reasoning behind the proposal. More