College Papers Won't Rewrite History For Alumni 221
Hugh Pickens writes "The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that as college papers have begun digitizing their back issues, their Web sites have become the latest front in the battle over online identities. Youthful activities like underage drinking that once would have disappeared into the recesses of a campus library are now preserved on the public record, and alumni are contacting newspapers with requests for redaction. Unlike with Facebook profiles, that other notable source of young-adult embarrassment, the affected parties can't remove or edit questionable content. In 2007, a Cornell University alum sued the Cornell Chronicle over a newly digitized article from 1983 that reported he had been charged with burglary while a student at Cornell. The alum found the article after Googling his name and claimed that its new presence online was causing him 'mental anguish' and 'loss of reputation.' But a California judge threw out the case after determining the report to be accurate. Some student papers, like The University Daily Kansan, have found a middle ground by adding the noindex meta tag so that the documents stay online, but search engines such as Google do not index them. 'I thought that would be better than kind of like sticking it to [the alum] and saying the paper is always right and we can publish anything on the Web we want,' says the paper's editor."
Hello to my fan Barbara Streissand (Score:2, Informative)
So you can judge what this is all about for yourselves:
The offending issue of the Cornell Chronicle [cornell.edu]
Re:Hello to my fan Barbara Streissand (Score:3, Informative)
Hint: "Blotter Barton"
They did actually find $474 worth (in 1983 dollars) of stolen goods from him.
Lessons to be learned:
1. Don't do +10 burglaries and get caught if you don't wanna get in the news.
2. Don't sue the paper for libel, when you actually did the crime, to get the information censored. It will have the opposite effect, moron!
Re:Simple Solution. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Simple Solution. (Score:3, Informative)
If convicted of burglary, yes. But the summary merely states that "he had been charged with burglary".*...
*Whether or not he commited the crime may be in the article, but you know we can't read that.
As a matter of fact, yes you can [cornellsun.com]. Pay particular attention to the part that says "Safety reported recovering some $474 worth of stolen goods from him."
It's interesting that he went on to become a lawyer in California. I can understand him not wanting the information publicly available, I would seek another lawyer if I knew his background.