Thursday April 18, 2013 year: 133 No. 57
the student voice of
The Ohio State University
www.thelantern.com
thelantern OSU monitors athletes’ Twitter, Facebook
sports
PATRICK MAKS Sports editor maks.1@osu.edu
Football wrap-up
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OSU’s assistant coaches met with the media Wednesday to answer questions about the football team’s spring.
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Ohio State is keeping a watchful eye on what its athletes do on social media. In an exclusive interview with The Lantern on March 12, athletic director Gene Smith said OSU monitors its student-athletes on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. “We track, so we see you as an athlete saying something on Twitter, or you’ve got something on your Facebook page that’s inappropriate or derogatory, we’ll come to you,” Smith said. “We’ll pull you in. They know we track, and so we do not have a policy to say you can’t do Facebook or Twitter or any of those other things.” But an error in judgement could cost the athletes. “If you see somebody with a Colt .45 and $500 bills in their hand at a Christmas party, then you got to go and pull them in,” Smith said. While Smith appeared to mean that as an example of an especially severe case, keeping tabs on about 1,100 student-athletes can be an arduous task. The Process To accomplish such a feat, OSU uses the help of a company called Jump Forward, which produce recruiting and compliance tools for college athletic departments, to monitor everything. Diana Sabau, OSU associate athletics director of external relations, said Jump Forward’s services, though, are based on a retainer agreement and
OSU monitors student-athletes with hired firm -OSU monitors about 1,100 student-athletes’ Twitter and Facebook accounts. -Jump Forward, a firm OSU hired, montiors all student-athletes by tracking words from a long list. -Fieldhouse Media, a firm similar to Jump Forward, flags tweets that contain tracked words and posts them on company’s website. Source: Reporting
KAYLA ZAMARY / Design editor
that the athletic department does not “actively” monitor its student-athletes. Rather, she said, Jump Forward serves as a “safeguard” with the option to track athletes or not. Additionally, Sabau said she did not know the value of the deal between Jump Forward and OSU. An OSU athletic department spokesman did not return requests for comment. While Jump Forward could not be reached by The Lantern for comment, Smith explained how the company serves their needs. “We have a firm,” Smith said. “We
have a long list of words that they track and we also have people that monitor repeat offenders, so they actually follow people.” It’s seemingly a line of work that, while relatively young, is booming as the social media galaxy continues to expand. Similar to Jump Forward, Fieldhouse Media (which provides services to about 30 schools including Arkansas, Wichita State, and Coastal Carolina), works to educate and monitor student-athletes. Its founder, Kevin DeShazo,
explained how the process of tracking typically works. “Our (system) is organized into categories: profanity, sexual, racial, violence, drugs and alcohol. So lets say they send out something that’s racially offensive, (an administrator) is going to get an email that says, ‘Hey, so and so tweeted this.’ And you can bring in the student-athlete and say, ‘Look, this is type of image that you’re building,’” he said. It’s a way, DeShazo said, “to
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Presidential interactions stick with students ALLY MAROTTI Editor-in-chief marotti.5@osu.edu
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Crowning a pong champion
Pong Madness is slated to take place at Big Bar & Grill May 2.
campus
Student recalls house attack
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ANDREW HOLLERAN / Photo editor
President Barack Obama speaks on the Oval Oct. 9. Obama is returning to OSU to speak at Spring Commencement May 5.
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Fees still apply to free May Session class
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SHAHED AL-ASADI Lantern reporter al-asadi.3@osu.edu
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Basements were the most common meeting place and small talk focused on everything from NCAA tournament brackets to law school aspirations. Ohio State Undergraduate Student Government presidents have enjoyed some face time on campus in recent years with their counterpart in the White House. In one case, President Barack Obama remembered the face, if not the name. “(OSU) had more presidential candidate visits than about 30 states last year,” said OSU President E. Gordon Gee in a March 25 meeting with The Lantern. “I told one of the Secret Service guys one time I was just going to give him a cot in my office and you could just stay here.” President Barack Obama has visited campus three times in a year. He kicked off his re-election campaign at the Schottenstein Center on May 5, and he is scheduled to give the Spring Commencement speech exactly one year later in Ohio Stadium. Between that time, he visited campus twice — once in August to grab a Reuben for lunch at Sloopy’s Diner and once to give a campaign speech on the Oval in October. Getting the president to speak at commencement is something Gee gives himself credit for. “This is a very funny story,” Gee told The Lantern. “I joked with him. I said, ‘Well Mr. President, you’re going to lose Ohio.’ And he said, ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘Because you gave the commencement speech to the University of Michigan (in 2010) and I want you to give it here.’ So that’s how that happened. “He’s a man of his word, so that was great,” Gee said. But of the six times Obama has come to OSU, Gee said that was one of the only interactions the two presidents had.
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Ohio State is footing the bill so students can take a free May Session course, but the university will be cashing checks for fees. Nancy Wygle, OSU Office of Enrollment Services spokeswoman, explained the free credit applies only to tuition fees, including instructional, general and nonresident fees, and will fluctuate from student to student. University Registrar Brad Myers said “other enrollment-related fees will be assessed as they would be for any student
enrolled in the summer session,” in an email. Wygle said these other fees might include Central Ohio Transit Authority and activity fees. Fees also vary between departments, meaning the rate will be slightly different for every student enrolled in the May session. However, some OSU students said they don’t mind the small fee in relation to what they will be saving in the long run. Kyle Hoyer, a second-year in health sciences, said the free class was his deciding factor. “Once I heard that you could enroll in
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ANDREW HOLLERAN / Photo editor
While students are able to take a 3-credit hour course for free during May Session, they will still need to pay some associated fees.
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