Many people use Facebook at present and they come from a variety of different backgrounds. While the service may have originally been designed for college students, it has deviated from these origins and become the everyman social network. Many people now possess Facebook accounts and use them as a method of keeping in contact with friends or playing games online.
The service is no stranger to controversy with employers asking for employee passwords before hiring new staff. This sparked an outrage and the policy has been given large amounts of media attention. Now CBS New York reports schools have worked out a new alternative: just force pupils to close their Facebook accounts. The Beis Rivkah school in Brooklyn, New York, is the first school to attempt to use school policy against Facebook; the school is for Jewish girls only and is part of a wider network in the United States.
President of the high school in Brooklyn, Benzion Stock, argued that students signed a contract acknowledging they would not use the social network. Now, some pupils have reportedly broken that contract, which has allegedly been in effect for the past two years. Stock argues that having a Facebook account violates a religious code of modesty. Speaking to 1010 Wins, she said the following:
“In religious communities they don’t want anybody to have the Internet, especially not Facebook. They all knew about it before, they were warned about it, they were told about it, they were taught about it and some girls ignored it.”
Students found in possession of a Facebook account were reportedly taken out of class and ordered to close their accounts, as well as paying a $100 fine. The alternative is to keep your account, but face expulsion from the school. Yes, expulsion. Your school career could be gone just like that, purely because you have an account on a service like Facebook. It may also be worth pointing out the "Israel Loves Iran" initiative was headed by a Jewish couple with Facebook accounts.