Author and attorney C.L. Lindsay focused on online safety and liability in his presentation, "Campus Computing: From Free Speech to Facebook," Monday night in Weasler Auditorium.,”A few Marquette students may be making some changes to their Facebook profiles soon.

Author and attorney C.L. Lindsay focused on online safety and liability in his presentation, "Campus Computing: From Free Speech to Facebook," Monday night in Weasler Auditorium. Twenty students were present at the Marquette Student Government-sponsored event.

The presentation began with a series of photos from online profiles of Marquette students, many featuring students in potentially troublesome situations. Included were photos of beer pyramids, students suggestively licking bottles of alcohol and a photo of a keg in a dormitory bathroom.

Lindsay said students should not post anything online they would not want to be made public.

"You wouldn't post a picture of yourself doing a keg stand all around campus, so it's probably not a good idea to post it online either," Lindsay said.

Lindsay, the author of "The College Student's Guide to the Law," is the founder of the Coalition for Student & Academic Rights, a nonprofit network of lawyers who help college students and professors with legal problems.

Lindsay has been touring campuses for about two years, often presenting pictures of underage drinking from the respective campuses.

"I've seen students drinking out of everything," he said. "Once I saw pictures of some kids drinking out of a tunneled wiffle ball bat."

While such pictures are not likely to harm students legally, they can still be very damaging, Lindsay said. Forty percent of employers have not hired applicants because of inappropriate online postings, he said.

"Employers are not likely to hire a guy who lists 'boobies' as one of his interests," he said.

Online plagiarism was another focus of the presentation. Essays offered by Web sites such as echeat.com or freeessays123.com are very high-risk and usually of poor quality, Lindsay said.

"The papers suck," Lindsay said. "They're almost always of C or D quality."

Such essays are often recycled and may get caught in online databases such as turnitin.com, Lindsay said.

Lindsay also warned against posting addresses or suggestive profile pictures, as they can make people more susceptible to online predators. Toward the end of the presentation, he displayed a collage of mug shots of people who assaulted, raped or murdered someone met online.

"It's a 1-in-5 million chance," Lindsay said. "But if you're the one, that doesn't matter."

Ryan Schlitt, MUSG speakers commissioner and College of Business Administration junior, organized the event. Schlitt said he plans on altering his Facebook profile.

"I definitely need to take my address off," he said. "I also need to be more careful since employers look at this stuff."

MUSG Executive Vice President Sara Soriano said the event was worthwhile but wished attendance would have been better.

"I was expecting more people," she said. "I think everybody might be watching the Packer game."

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