Mira Djuric always enjoys meeting someone new.
The Oregon freshman finds new friends both in person and online. Through the World Wide Web, Djuric meets people on Facebook.com, an online profile service attending to more than 7 million people nationwide.
Djuric is also a burgeoning volleyball talent at Oregon, which leads to a larger question: Are athletes too accessible to the public?
Increasingly close contact between the public and college athletes is attracting attention at universities across the nation, and Oregon is no exception.
University officials are educating coaches about the dangers of online profiles. Coaches, in turn, are taking the information and talking to their student-athletes.
“We’ve tried to educate people and give them information that basically says, ‘Here is what you’re doing and here is how people could use this against you,’” said Chris Butler, Director of Information Technology.
Oregon currently possesses no departmental policy on athletes’ use of Facebook or other online profile services, said Dave Williford,Assistant Athletic Director of Media Services.
Poke me
Facebook allows users to create an online profile, complete with photos of themselves. Users are required to have a school e-mail address. Individuals can pretend to be someone else on the site, but they can be found out,
Facebook spokesman Chris Hughes wrote in an e-mail to the Emerald.
“No one is ever ‘anonymous’ on the network – each profile can be traced back to a real person who can be held accountable for activity on the site,” he said. “This makes our users much more responsible than users on other networks.”
Individuals can post personal information ranging from gender and sexual orientation to addresses and cell phone numbers. Users are able to search for other individuals and send a request asking them to confirm them as a friends. If confirmed, friends are then listed on users profiles, where they can be easily browsed.
A user can only see profiles of people at his or her university, unless users from different schools confirm each other as mutual friends. Users can restrict who can and can’t access their profile and who can write on their “wall.”
The wall allows users to leave short messages on other profiles, but is not private, unlike messages, which can be sent privately, and pokes, which send a message saying “You have been poked,” and is often used to attract the attention of another user.
The Emerald found that several athletes list cell phones and addresses online, but women’s basketball guard Cicely Oaks isn’t one of them, she said.
“I don’t really want people really reading about me on that,” Oaks said.
Facebook members are able to create groups. The groups often reflect sports teams, campus organizations `including fraternities and sororities and common interest groups. Members can restrict group access to private invitations or open it to anyone.
In addition to the user photo, members possess a My Photos page, where they can upload photos and sort them in albums. This is an area of concern for universities, as some athletes post photos of drinking and parties.
Worried coaches
Soccer coach Tara Erickson talked to her team last fall after hearing about using caution in regard to online profiles from University officials. She warned the team in general terms, focusing on her athletes’ personal safety.
Erickson wanted her team to “Understand what you are putting out there is for the masses to look it and lets everyone into your personal life.”
Two popular Oregon athletes, Chamberlain Oguchi and Bryce Taylor, declined interview requests about Facebook through Greg Walker, sports information director for the men’s basketball team. Both cited privacy. High profile athletes listed on
Facebook include Dennis Dixon, Brady Leaf, Malik Hairston, Jonathan Stewart and many more. Anyone with a school e-mail address can access Facebook, including faculty. Softball coach Kathy Arendsen is listed on Facebook as well as softball sports information director Allison Ross.
USA Today used students to gain access to the site and published a wide range of stories on the subject. They reported on two LSU swimmers who were kicked off the team for criticizing their coaches on Facebook.
A simple online search brings up numerous examples, including
Colorado tackle Clint O’Neal and his girlfriend Jackie Zeigle, who sent a racially threatening e-mail to a cross-country runner through Facebook.
Some schools, notably Baylor, have warned students and Florida State and Loyola, USA Today reported, have asked athletes to remove all personal information from Facebook. Athletes have other options, Hughes said.
“Athletes, just like anyone else, could be using other social networking sites similar to Facebook, but none of the others would even be comparable or similar because they aren’t reflections of ‘real-life’ communities that exist,” he said. “MySpace, for instance, has over 70 million registered users and is organized very differently than the local college’s small, insulated branch of Facebook.”
Open to interpretation
Available Facebook information can be misconstrued depending on who’s looking. Employers and graduate schools, among others, are starting to look online.
Oregon men’s basketball player Ivan Johnson, who was occasionally at odds with coach Ernie Kent last season, is a group member of “Bob Huggins for UO Basketball Coach.” The group’s description reads, “Bob Huggins was wrongfully fired by UC and we should give him another chance to make the Ducks a respectable team.” Under Recent News it says: “I’d take any coach over Ernie Kent.”
Athletes live under a microscope and are heavily scrutinized, said Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center.
Oregon athletes, notably football players including Haloti Ngata, Devan Long and Tim Day go on to play professionally. Talent is still the bottom line, but character is becoming more important and negative information, even online, can hurt them, Swangard said.
“There are business interests beyond the success of the team,” he said. “Most fans know that they want to see their team win, but they probably want to see their team win the right way.”
Oregon athletics, similar to professional sports, offers a product through ticket sales and merchandise. If athletes are acting inappropriately on or off the field it reflects on the program, and if athletes don’t abide by the rules universities will act, even if there is a short term financial loss, to protect its reputation, Swangard said.
“You need to make sure the message you convey on that type of setting via Facebook or MySpace or anything really, is one that represents the University well and yourself well and your family well,” said Nurse, a guard on the Oregon women’s basketball team. “That’s always important that you hold yourself to a higher standard.”
On the opposite end, athletes like track athletes Galen Rupp and Rebekah Noble, are managed closely by coaches.
“In some circles, they are isolated enough from the student population,” Williford said. “I think you have to be careful not to be more restrictive on student-athletes than you would if they were not athletes.”
Open to the world
Athletes and students can have the illusion it’s a private thing, but both volleyball coach Jim Moore and Erickson emphasized they wouldn’t hesitate to punish athletes if they posted content breaking team rules.
“If there’s things out there that’s going to be a detriment to this program, you’ll be held responsible for it even though you feel think that is your own personal thing,” Moore said. “They would be held accountable. There is no question in my mind.”
Erickson, who like Moore is building a program, realizes the importance of a team’s image.
“You find out about kids breaking rules all sorts of ways whether it’s someone else telling on
them or a parent or another coach,” Erickson said. “You hear a lot of things. If someone is breaking a rule, they run the risk of it always coming back to the coach and it’s amazing how much information does come back to the coaching staff.”
“I don’t go out and drink and take pictures of it or write something about my coaches so I’m not really worried about it,” Oaks said. “You could if you were dumb enough.”
Moore and Erickson did say they are unlikely to go online anytime soon, choosing to verbally educate athletes instead.
“I’m not curious or drawn to do it right now, no,” Erickson said.
When Oregon athletes are freshmen, they are signed up for Duck Voice, which e-mails students on a variety of topics, said Karen Nelson, Assistant Athletic Director for Student Services. She occasionally includes Facebook and other online profile related stories.
Djuric made a post Feb. 22, warning athletes that someone within the athletic department had been checking athlete’s profiles:
“ATTENTION ALL ATHLETES ! ! ! THERE IS AN FACEBOOK COP IN ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT ! THIS IS NO JOKE! PEOPLE FROM ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT HEARD THAT THERE ARE SOME CONTROVERSIAL PHOTOS ON SOME PEOPLE’S PROFILES, AND NOW THEY HAVE A PERSON THAT IS GOING THROUGH EVERYONE’S PROFILE LOOKING AT OUR STUFF ! ! !”
Asked whether University officials check athletes profiles online, Williford and Butler denied it. Djuric sat down with Moore last spring to discuss a math course, and she said an adult came in and warned her about material posted online. Djuric doesn’t know if the adult was a college official.
Athletic connections
Djuric and Nurse came from Serbia and Hamilton, Ontario in Canada, respectively. Being far from home, Facebook allows Nurse to keep in contact with high school classmates and other basketball players she’s met in her basketball career.
“Kids I used to play with that you lose touch with but you can still see how they are doing and every now and then leave them a little message and say, ‘What’s up?’ It’s kind of like a cell phone,” Nurse said.
Nurse has emptied her profile of all personal information since talking to the Emerald.
Former Oregon guard Brandi Davis, who is trying out for the Los Angeles Sparks, leaves messages and jokes on teammates profiles.
“It’s like kind of exciting,” Nurse said. “It’s like getting mail – ‘I got a message.’”
Fans will occasionally contact Nurse, Oaks and Djuric following a performance.
“You sit there and say, ‘Someone really watched us play,’” Nurse said. “Someone not in Oregon or someone up the West Coast watched us play and they liked how we played.”
Oaks questions the random e-mails at times.
“How do you know me?” she said. “A lot of people do it just so they can have a lot of friends. I don’t necessarily have a lot of people in my list I don’t talk to.”
The gregarious Djuric, when she receives a fan message, would rather meet in person. Athletes understand each other: The long days, practices and homework but she enjoys non-athlete friends as well, she said, and Facebook can provide that.
“I know that some people want to hang out with me because I’m an athlete,” Djuric said. “Sometimes that insults me, but once they get to know me they know I’m nothing special. That I’m not this big hot shot star.”