By STEPHEN DAUSE
YOUTH CORRESPONDENT
Rumor has it that college admissions boards are viewing applicants' profiles on the teen networking Web site MySpace to look for potentially reputation-tarnishing information.
If this is true, I think it's taking background checks a little too far.
Students applying to almost any college have to sign a statement saying they haven't been convicted of a felony. Expulsion or worse will result if they lie.
Criminal information certainly doesn't tell the whole story. But secretly looking up students' personal information is not only unfair, it seems a little naive.
As a student, I know college applications involve a whole lot of fudging the facts--or at least omitting certain less-than-favorable ones about yourself. If you're applying to a college that you really want to attend, you're going to make yourself out to be a goody-two-shoes.
Of course kids will swear, of course they will drink before they're 21, and of course they will be promiscuous. The older generation will always believe the younger generation is going too far.
It's my bet that if colleges really knew everything there is to know about teenage life, they wouldn't accept a majority of the students they are accepting now.
"Don't ask, don't tell" isn't normally a good policy, but trying to examine the moral background of every 17-year-old applying to college seems futile.
If this rumor is in fact false and is only the result of someone once saying, "Oh no, what if ," then maybe college admissions deans really don't want to know--or at least, they don't want to spend the time to find out.
Still, even if it isn't, it has always seemed funny to me that we as teenagers put on this facade about who we really are. From what I gather about adult life, though, it seems we will have to continue doing it our entire lives.
There's a place for formality, and there's a place for being real. Don't mix the two.
STEPHEN DAUSE is a senior at Colonial Forge High School.