Terry Calhoun, Commentator
Society for College and University Planning (SCUP)
University of Michigan

The Feral User

When did we become responsible for “civilizing” feral users, and why d'esn’t anyone realize the huge responsibility that has been thrust on higher education IT staff?

If you’ve read Lord of the Flies or Tarzan, or ever heard about the Wolf Boy in anthropology class you’re familiar with the spectrum of mythology regarding what young people without adults are capable of getting up to. Tarzan, of course, was remarkably civilized for having been raised by nonhuman animals but those kids in Lord of the Flies were scary.

We’ve almost got a Lord of the Flies situation with our freshman class and its cyberculture. They’ve grown up with access to IT and the Internet and have acculturated in a shadowy, underground cyberworld that is not under adult supervision. And most of them have been exposed to little or no “civilizing” processes with regard to their computer usage – until they come to campus.
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Terry Calhoun ([email protected]) is director of communications and publications for the Society for College and University Planning (www.scup.org).

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