Collective Cause

Question 2 (Shirky, Chapter 6): What kinds of collective causes have you become a part of? Did the cause have a website? How did you learn about the cause? How did you participate? What kind(s) of technology were used to communicate re: the group forming or group action?

Answer: At my high school, there is an athletic code of conduct that each student-athlete is required to sign and agree to when they try out for any of the various sports teams that were offered. During my junior year back in 2005, a huge scandal erupted when a former student’s vengeful mother mailed pictures to the school office, printed from Facebook, of student-athletes clearly drinking alcohol at parties. One other thing to mention as background is that my school has a very serious honor code, similar to that of UVA’s. Because of this, the school chose not to kick people off of teams but asked that people who have drunken and therefore broken the code of conduct turn themselves in and forfeit their spots on the teams. Many people chose to do this, because it was honorable, and a lot of them sacrificed collegiate sports dreams because of it.

The part of the cause that I took was in support of people turning themselves in. Our school president, a three-sport star athlete, refused to turn himself in. Two things made us furious about this: pictures of him drinking were on the principal’s desk in the school office and not only did he refuse to turn himself in, but the school did absolutely nothing about it because of his strong family influences at my school. Many of us organized a group protesting the double standards at our school. We used mail, phones, and tools such as Facebook to organize a powerful push to curb this lack of justice. The effort failed eventually, but we enjoyed sparking some nerve in the bureaucrats at my school. Our group communication allowed us to make serious moves and changed the way things are done at my high school.