Yes, We're Using FaceBook

The people who know and waste time on FaceBook already may already have clicked on the link on the home page and gotten on with their lives. The rest of you may be looking for answers to questions like:

This page is supposed to answer these questions. Okay, most of these questions. Some you'll have to figure out on your own. That's what the liberal arts degree was for (and you've been wondering all these years why you got it...)

How Do I Join?

Go to FaceBook. If you don't have an account yet, get one. You'll need this. The go to the Carleton - Class of 1987 group (follow the link right before this parenthetical remark). Click on the button that says, "Ask to Join Group". Wait anxiously by your inbox, refreshing it at least a couple of times a minute. Eventually, one of the tireless admins will check your name against a list of the folks in our class and then we'll let you in. Note: if you have a completely unobvious user name and your profile doesn't have your real name in it, then we won't have enough information to check that you're in the class. So please help us out and give us something to go with here. Examples of non-helpful names include Minny Mouse, Terrible Tommy and his Twinkle Toes, and Martha.

Why do we need another site besides this awesome website?

For the last couple of reunions, the website seemed to be a hit. In particular, it was great to have a place to go to find out information about the event, but even morea bout the friends that we went to school with. The bios page, for example, gave you a little glimpse into our friends lives and enabled a way to contact people that you might have lost touch with. But we here at website central heard that people wanted more. For example, what about a live blog? Or a way to write everyone easily? Or a way to restrict the info on the bio pages, or edit it later when you realize what you sent me when you were drunk that night?

That's where FaceBook comes in. Sure, we could implement all of that ... but frankly, it'd be a lot of work, and there are social networking sites available now that simply weren't around back then that allow all of this functionality and more. So why not hook into that system and let them do the work for us?

Why FaceBook?

We here at the central reunion website planning commission committee organization and agency (CRWPCCOA) investigated several alternatives, including FaceBook and Google+. Both have some advantages, but the main ones in favor of FaceBook include:

So, FaceBook it is.

Privacy

Some of you may not use FaceBook because of privacy concerns. Some of you may not want to jump into the reunion group because of similar concerns.

I can't address the larger question of FaceBook itself, so I'll let you sort that out. But the group that we've set up is "Closed", which means that if you search for it, you can see that it exists... and that's it. Nobody that's not a member o the group can see the posts/comments/info in the group. And members will be added only by the admins of the group; you have to ask to be added, and we have to vet your name against the list of people we know are in the class.

So basically, what happens in the reunion group stays in the reunion group. You still might not want to post that picture of you with the president's pug after the kegger at Village House. But I'll leave that decision up to you.

Do I Have to? I Hate FaceBook! I Refuse to Use It! They're Anti-Union and Talk Meanly to Small Animals!

That's fine. It's not a requirement for reunion (or graduation - but you still have to pass the swim test if you want your degree). All of the info about the reunion event itself and ongoing blurbs will be posted to this site, just like last time. You will miss out on some of the more dynamic info about the people and the time-wasting status comments that we'll post in the group. But you'll be fine. We'll catch up at reunion.

What about This Site?

I think I just answered that one above; this site will still exist and a lot of info will be found here. In fact, we'll probably continue to post the majority of content here and will link to it from the FaceBook group, just because it's easier to find stuff on a site than on a page covered with random status scribblings. So bookmark both this site and the FaceBook group; they'll both be used.

Do I have to Friend my Mom?

Yes.

 

Website by Chet Haase