The city of Bozeman, located in Montana, is forcefully raising a most profound question, namely: To what extent are the social-networking sites to which we belong relevant to the job that we seek to hold? Here is the obvious: If our behavior on these sites is morally appropriate, then that is surely a good thing; whereas if our behavior on these sites is most inappropriate, then that is a bad thing. The obvious question to be asked is this: To what extent, if any, is our behavior on social-networking sites relevant to the job we wish to hold? Equally obvious: it depends on the job and what we do on those sites.
There is another issue at stake, though, namely the following: To what extent if any are human beings rightly understood as being psychologically whole selves? Can a person be utterly irresponsible and decadent in her or his behavior on (for example) Facebook but, while on the job, be completely responsible and generally measured in just the rights ways?
The general thought that most of us have is that what a person does in private is not anyone else’s business. Alas, the very problem with social-networking sites generally is that they do not constitute a private context. Rather, they are public contexts in which people are free to convey personal—and thus private—information. Social-networking sites are rather like public sidewalks. How a person walks down the street and what she or her wears generally tells me a great deal of information about that person.
So if a person frequently walked down the street so scantily dressed that it as if the individual were in the bedroom preparing to strike a salacious pose before engaging in sex, then that person reveals something rather significant about herself or himself; and if that person applied for a teaching position in elementary school in the neighborhood, I cannot see how one could ignore the person’s frequent style of dress. As we shall see momentarily, it is just plain foolish to say that how the person frequently dresses while walking down the street has no bearing on her or his ability to be effective in the classroom as a teacher.
Now, suppose that the teaching candidate exclaims—and quite honestly—that she or he would never dress salaciously in the classroom. Is it relevant that it is only outside of the classroom that the person dresses salaciously outside of the classroom? Those who claim that it is not relevant are committed to a kind of radical individualism and compartmentalization that cannot be sustained. A person’s appearances in public contexts that are not affiliated with her or his actual job are fundamentally linked to how we respect that individual during her or his actual job performance. Or so it is if we are committed to a certain unity of the self.
For example, if I am a student and I know that Opidopo is given to salacious behavior outside of the classroom, then any given instance of behavior by Opidopo might strike me as salacious. By contrast, if there is nothing salacious about Opidopo’s public behavior outside of the classroom, then the likelihood of my thinking that a given instance of Opidopo’s behavior in the classroom is salacious drops precipitously.
If Opidopo has a reputation among students for going to bars and trying to have sex with anyone in the bar, it is simply not possible to expect students to cast this fact aside while interacting with Opidopo in the classroom. How could they? If Opidopo stands too close, then it would be perfectly natural for a student to wonder if this might be an expression of sexual interest on Opidopo’s part.
It is an inescapable truth that what we routinely see a person doing in contexts unrelated to a job bears upon how we think about that person’s behavior when he or he is on the job. Indeed, what we know about a person simply makes this difference. And it is this truth that is the problem with social-networking sites.
Because my students know that I move back and forth between France and the United States and that I speak both French and English, they understand perfectly well that I might sometimes blurt out an utterance in French. Take away that background knowledge, and my occasionally blurting out an utterance in French is incomprehensible, at best, or it will be seen as contrived and pretentious, at worse.
So if on a Facebook page, I posted photos of myself in which I am scantily clothed, it is simply not reasonable to expect my students to be unmindful of this in my interactions with them. And they would have to be a bit psychologically underdeveloped if they were.
Of course, it is possible for individuals to do things in private that no one would ever suspect. This happens all the time. And in general such behavior is generally no one else’s business. Alas, it is a mistake to infer from this that private behavior done in public is something that those who behold such behavior should be expected to ignore. That is not possible for individuals who are psychologically healthy.
Our assessment of any individual is rightly tied to the facts that we know about a person. More significantly, if we are psychologically healthy, it is not possible for us to have a pertinent fact about an individual and ignore it. That would be like knowing that someone in the room is completely healthy and 7 feet tall, and not taking that into account when needs someone to get a book located on a very high shelf. It would silly and psychologically untenable to intone what in some sense is quite true, namely that a person’s height is no one else’s business.
One of the most important issues in life pertains to the motivations with which a person behaves. And the more we know about a person, the more insight we have into the motivations with which a person behaves. Being mindful of the motivations with which a person is an inextricable part of taking an individual seriously. If this is right, then we cannot do whatever we please on social-networking sights and claim that it is no one else’s business and, in particular, it is not the business of potential employers. After all, a constitutive of aspect of taking a person seriously is to be mindful of the motivations with which that individual behaves.
So insofar as we want to be taken seriously, then we cannot expect people to set aside our behavior on social-networking sites. It is indeed disingenuous to expect people to do so, precisely because acting with a rich set of motivations is one of the distinguishing features of human beings.
Now, the City of Bozeman wants applicants to give their passwords to the social-networking sites to which they belong. I have not argued for or against that. What I suspect is more appropriate is to inform applicants that the social-networking sites to which they belong will be regularly monitored and to specify the kinds of images that will put the applicant’s job in jeopardy if these images appear on these sites.
