<p>I googled my S’s roommate after he had the info for 2 months and never even attempted to make contact - either of them. Is this a guy thing? It was for my own curiosity- He knew I googled and didn’t care. My D was online 30 seconds after finding out her roommate’s name. They are best of friends, from very different backgrounds. She let me in on all her info though, so I didn’t have to “take matters into my own hands.” Over-reaching in my son’s case? Probably - but the info was there for the taking. (Now I feel like Eve with the apple.)</p>
<p>I thought I was a helicopter parent, but even I think this kind of snooping is a little much. Why do we need to know stuff about roommates? Let the students themselves find out firsthand. Googling names is fine if you have a more direct interest such as a potential job applicant or want to write a blog post about others who share your name (I got an e-mail from a N.C. cop looking for a missing person after that one).</p>
<p>marian wrote: “My daughter has the same name as a well-known documentary filmmaker. My son has the same name as a guy who is big in the world of classic car collecting.”</p>
<p>I searched for “myself” and discovered I share the name of a very well known judge. What a fun idea.</p>
<p>Has anyone else searched for themselves?</p>
<p>Searching for yourself is called “ego surfing,” and is very commonplace. I started doing it years ago when a guy on Usenet tried to impersonate me in online discussions about education reform. A friend of mine back when the most reliable search engine was Altavista used to put my name in for demonstration searches at his place of work, because it produced lots of hits.</p>
<p>college roommates… no.</p>
<p>When my 19 year old daughter decided to sublet a room in a city apartment for the summer shared with 2 20-something male students who put up an ad in craiglist? Yeh, you bet I Googled. (I’ve since met the roommies – both are nice guys & perfect gentleman - but I’m kind of glad I “met” them first through detailed, though reassuringly boring, info found online & in myspace)</p>
<p>This relates to another thread which will remain unnamed because it ended in a bloodbath…relating to the responsibility of universities to <em>screen</em> applicants for past issues (police runins, etc). As long as there is the potential that a college will admit someone with a rap sheet, there will be moms who google.</p>
<p>I have googled myself … found a couple newspaper articles with comments from yours truly on our local schools. I feel famous :).</p>
<p>I have also googled my kids, from time to time, to make sure nothing shows up on them. I trust THEM … it’s others who might use their names in their own posting that I am not so sure about. Only good things have ever shown up. Possibly, I worry too much … ?!</p>
<p>I’m with Garland…it seems meddlesome to me. If the kids are curious about each other they can facebook or email or google.</p>
<p>As long as I’m a mother, I’ll google. It’s part of my job in raising my child to become a responsible adult.</p>
<p>Employers and those screening grad school applicants view facebook and myspace pages and draw conclusions about how the applicant presents themself to the world.</p>
<p>Why wouldn’t a responsible parent do the same for the person their kid would live with, or in the case of a boyfriend/girlfriend, share their intimate life with? And what it your own daughter has photos of herself on facebook in her underwear? Wouldn’t you sit her down and have a talk? This stuff is posted by the kids themselves for all the world to see.</p>
<p>I have googled my kids – I told them first – in DS1’s case, to see which of his activities, etc. appear. (He shares a name with an architect in Milwaukee.) The idea was to see what a college admin would see if my son were googled. Nothing bad showed up, and verification of things going back to middle school did appear, so when DS talks about having an interest since he was 10, there is online verification. (After all, if I saw it on the Web, IT MUST BE TRUE!!) ;)</p>
<p>I google strange things all the time, so I don’t think DS1 would consider it unusual if I looked up roommates, though I would ask him first. At some point he may not be so laissez-faire about it.</p>
<p><a href=“After%20all,%20if%20I%20saw%20it%20on%20the%20Web,%20IT%20MUST%20BE%20TRUE!!”>quote=CountingDown</a> 
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</p>
<p>That’s my LOL of the day.</p>
<p>A new identifier for parental-typing… “Are you a googler?”</p>
<p>Hello. I’m Astrophysicsmom and I am a Googler.</p>
<p>My point of view has always been that if it is “googlable”, it’s fair game…nothing on the internet is sacred, and it is readily accessible via Google, anyone can (and will) see it. I don’t have access to my 2 D’s facebook pages, but they both periodically give me a “tour” of what’s out there. (a guided tour, of course).</p>
<p>Googler: Parent who looks up their child’s roommates/friends on the internet.
Gobbler: One who talks about their child on the internet.
:)</p>
<p>Venn diagram- (you have to conceptualize this)- All of us are gobblers; some of us are googlers, which is a subset of gobblers.</p>
<p>We are Incognito Gobblers!</p>
<p>kelsmom,
LOL! Yes, homo sapien…
sub species: gobbler…
sub-sub species (is there a category for this?): incognito</p>
<p>I google myself and my family members fairly often; I just think it’s important to know what’s out there. We have a very unusual last name so I don’t get random hits from other people’s lives.</p>
<p>My maiden name is shared by a woman who is apparently a well-known speech therapist (well-known in her field, at least). Kind of funny, because when I was in hs and took an “interest survey” test, it suggested I should be a speech therapist. I’m not, though.</p>
<p>Upon getting my roomate’s name, i googled his name, looked him up on myspace/facebook, did extensive detective work, examined his pictures, deduced his personality, stance, and upbringing. </p>
<p>It helps to know what to expect from your roomate, you would eventually find out this information anyway.</p>
<p>I’m a rising senior, and from a student’s perspective, I’m fine with the idea of a parent googling a potential room mate, just so long as they don’t put hours and hours into it, or try with every different search engine in case one of them missed something, or look up other people who’ve participated in things with my roommate or anything like that. It depends on how much the kid would be bothered by it though…</p>
<p>I Googled my roommate only to find that he was drafted by the Yankees. Not even kidding. Sadly there is a chance I will have a single freshman year now…</p>