1. Social Media
#whyd3
Sarah Otey

2. Special Thanks
Kate Corcoran
Terri Deike
Brian Granata

3. It seems like there are new social media platforms popping up everyday
It seems like there are new social media platforms popping up everyday. So I’ve had to be a little creative in making sure I can keep track of all of them. What better way to understand social media than using donuts as a case study.
I don’t want to belabor this, so just a couple of highlights. If you need to talk about how much you like donuts, use Facebook. If its incredibly important that the world know that you are currently eating a donut, Twitter should work just fine. If you are looking for a donut recipe, check out Pinterest. And if you want to post a photo of your favorite donut – with or without a filter – try Instagram.

4. Agenda Recruiting. Athletically related activities.
Promotional activities.
Unfortunately, Jeff and Louise would only let me use one slide to talk about donuts – so I guess we will spend the rest of the session looking at ways our Division III athletics departments are using social media – and where our Division III legislation comes into play.
I am going to focus on three primary areas. Probably most significant for all of you is the use of social media in recruiting. But we will also spend some time talking about using social media for athletically related activities and promotional activities occurring on social media.

5. For Starters… Generally, legislation applies to:
Institutional accounts.
Team accounts.
Athletics department staff member personal accounts.
SA’s account – when directed by athletics department.
So before we get into the nuts and bolts of the legislation, I want to start with a couple of ground rules.
Throughout the session, when we are talking about our Division III legislation and how that applies through the lens of social media – that legislation is going to apply to institutional accounts (and don’t worry – we will talk about some limited exceptions there), to athletics team accounts, to athletics department staff members’ personal accounts – and then it would also apply to student-athletes’ accounts if the student-athlete is acting at the direction of the athletics department.

6. Recruiting
Let’s go ahead and start with the area where we get the most questions – recruiting.

7. Social Media in Recruitment
Specific social media platform is irrelevant.
Two concerns:
Publicizing recruitment of a PSA using social media.
Recruiting communication with a PSA using social media.
NCAA Bylaws and
That first slide that I showed you had a number of different social media platforms – and there are many more that were not mentioned on that slide. Because of the huge number of specific social media platforms, it’s really a waste of energy for all of us to try to understand how the legislation applies to any one specific platform. Because, in reality, the actual social media platform is irrelevant.
Its more useful to remember that when using social media – you need to think about two primary things: (1) how can you publicize your recruitment of a prospective student-athlete?; and (2) what types of recruiting communication can you have with a prospective student-athlete using social media?
Two additional things to keep in mind as we go forward: First of all, using social media to publicize anything about a PSA is publicizing recruitment at a very basic level.
Secondly, any use of social media that tags, links, messages or otherwise sends a direct communication to a PSA is communication with that PSA using a social media platform.

8. When? Before financial deposit.
After financial deposit but prior to May 1.
After financial deposit and after May 1.
As we start to think about the relationship between social media publicity and social media communications, this is the timeline that I want you to keep in mind. There are distinctions between what you can do before a financial deposit, after a financial deposit but before May 1 – and then after a financial deposit AND after May 1.

9. Before Financial Deposit
Athletics may
Send private, direct message to PSA (or PSA’s family) using social media.
Athletics may not
Send public message to PSA (or PSA’s family).
Post information about PSA.
Like a PSA’s post (or a post PSA is tagged in).
Follow, friend, retweet or tag a PSA.
So to narrow it down further into the specifics – before a financial deposit…
Your athletic department can send private and direct messages to the PSA or the PSA’s family using social media. So, for example, you could use the Facebook messaging function to send a private, direct message to a PSA you are recruiting.
You could not, however, send a public message (so although you could use the private messaging function in Facebook, you couldn’t post on the PSA’s wall), you can’t post any information on your own social media account about the PSA, you can’t like or favorite a PSA’s post (or a post the PSA is tagged in) and you can’t friend, follow, retweet or tag a PSA.

10. After Financial Deposit, Before May 1
Athletics may
Send private, direct message to PSA (or PSA’s family) using social media.
Use social media to announce PSA’s commitment to attend the institution, without tagging the PSA.
Athletics may not
Send public message to PSA (or PSA’s family).
Like a PSA’s post (or a post PSA is tagged in).
Follow, friend, retweet or tag a PSA.
What changes after a financial deposit? Who remembers?
After a financial deposit – the publicity restrictions go away but the electronic communication restrictions remain.
What that means is that the athletics department can still only send private, direct messages to the PSA using social media. But athletics can also use social media to announce the PSA’s commitment to attend the institution.
The institution could still not tag the PSA in that announcement because that would be impermissible public communication. Athletics would also still be precluded from sending public messages using social media, from liking a PSA’s post (so if the PSA posts about how excited they are the attend your institution, you cant like or favorite that post) – and as I already mentioned athletics still could not follow, friend, retweet or tag the PSA.

11. After Financial Deposit, After May 1
Athletics may…
Send private, direct messages to PSA (or PSA’s family) using social media.
Send public messages to PSA (or PSA’s family).
Use social media to announce PSA’s commitment to attend the institution.
Friend, follow, retweet or tag a PSA.
Like a PSA’s post (or a post PSA is tagged in).
Now what changes after both a financial deposit and after May 1?
Now the publicity restrictions no longer exist. The electronic communications restrictions also no longer exist.
So after a financial deposit and after May 1, you can publicize a PSA’s commitment to attend your institution, you can publicly communicate with the PSA on social media, you can friend, follow, retweet or tag the PSA – and you can like a PSA’s post or a post the PSA is tagged in.

12. RSRO Question Is this permissible? What else do you need to know?
What I’m going to do here is try to tie a lot of these concepts back to questions we have gotten through RSRO. Full disclosure – the social media posts are not actually real. For someone who isn’t super active on social media, I spent WAY too much time on websites allowing me to generate fake social media posts.
So this Facebook post comes from an institutional athletics account and the post is saying how excited this athletics department is that Polly PSA has signed her celebratory signing form and is coming to the institution next year.
What else do we need to know to determine whether this Facebook post is permissible?

13. RSRO Answer
PSA does not appear to be tagged in the post, so this is not considered communication.
We can focus our efforts on the publicity legislation.
When did the institution post this on Facebook?
If PSA has submitted financial deposit to institution…
This Facebook post is permissible.
If PSA has not submitted financial deposit to the institution…
This Facebook post is not permissible.
So first things first – Polly PSA does not appear to be tagged in this post. So that means this post is NOT considered public electronic communication.
So we can focus our energy on the publicity.
And in order to figure out the appropriate application of the publicity legislation, we need to know when the institution posted this on Facebook. Specifically, we need to know whether the PSA had submitted a financial deposit to the institution at the time of the post. If the PSA had submitted a financial deposit, the post would have been permissible because after a financial deposit an institution can publicize a PSA’s commitment.
If the PSA had not submitted a financial deposit, this would have been a violation – and we would have advised the institution to report that violation through RSRO.

14. RSRO Question Posted on April 15 So let’s look at another example.
This is actually an Instagram post by a PSA. And let’s assume this was posted on April 15.
This PSA posts about how excited he or she (little hard to tell) is to attend DIII college next year. And you can see that the PSA has tagged DIII College in the Instagram post.
DIII College, probably upon receiving notification that the PSA tagged their institutional account, responds to the post and says “yay. Cant wait.”

15. RSRO Answer Issue with PSA tagging the institution?
Institution is not responsible if PSA tags the institution.
Issue with the institution commenting on the PSA’s post?
Yes. This was a public communication prior to May 1.
So there are two things to focus on here.
First, is there an issue with the PSA tagging the institution in the original post? No – our legislation does not address the way a PSA may communicate using social media.
But our legislation does, of course, address the way the institution uses social media. So is there an issue the institution commenting on the PSA’s post? Because this was posted on April 15, this would have been impermissible communication with a PSA prior to May 1 (even if that PSA had submitted a financial deposit to the institution).

16. Department Outside Athletics
Admissions office may publicize a PSA’s visit to the institution’s campus in the same manner done for prospective students generally.
Institutional staff member outside of athletics may initiate or respond to social media correspondence.
Staff member must be acting in the same manner done for prospective students generally.
Cannot be acting at the direction of athletics.
Bylaw
April 23, 2015, Staff Interpretation.
No good rule is sufficiently confusing without an exception.
When we started this conversation, we talked about which social media accounts would be bound our Division III legislation. You probably noticed that I did not mention institutional departments outside of athletics.
And we have both a legislative exception and a staff interpretation that address the ways that these other departments can and cannot interact with PSAs – and that would include interaction in the social media space.
So its probably easiest to focus on admissions offices, because that where most questions arise.
The take home message here is that as long as the admissions office is acting in the same way it would for all prospective students and is not acting at the direction of the athletics department, the admissions can publicize a PSA’s visit at any time and can correspond with a PSA using social media.

17. RSRO Question
This tweet originated from the institution’s admissions office staff.
The admissions office staff tweets about every prospective student that visits the institution’s campus.
Permissible?
Yes.
Can athletics favorite or retweet this tweet?
No.
So lets look at an example here.
The DIII College admissions office tweeted about a DIII PSA visiting campus for the weekend and tagged the PSA in the tweet.
DIII College admissions tweets about every PSA that visits the campus.
So was this tweet ok? Yes, because the admissions office is not acting at the direction of athletics and is acting as they would for any prospective student.
Bonus question…can athletics favorite or retweet this?
No. First of all, we don’t know whether the PSA has deposited. So we don’t know whether the publicity restrictions still apply. But even if the PSA had deposited, this tweet occurred before May 1 – so the athletics department would not be permitted to publicly communicate with the PSA.
Why would this have been public communication? Because the PSA is tagged in the tweet.
Could athletics have tweeted the same thing?

18. Athletically Related Activity
Ok and the last concept that I want to talk about is athletically related activity and where we see social media questions arising with regard to Bylaw 17.

19. Athletically Related Activity
SAs are precluded from participating in athletically related activity outside of the declared playing season.
SA can participate in voluntary activities.
In order for an activity to be voluntary:
No reporting back to sport-specific coaches.
Initiated by SA.
Attendance/participation cannot be recorded.
No penalty.
Bylaws and
You guys already got some information on the athletically related activities legislation this morning – and you all know the basics.
Outside of the declared playing and practice season, student-athletes cannot participate in anything that would be considered an athletically related activity.
They can, however, participate in voluntary activities. But there is a relatively high bar in our legislation in order to define something as truly voluntary.
Specifically, the activity cannot be reported back to sport specific coaches, the activity has initiated by the student-athlete, attendance cant be recorded, and student-athletes cant be penalized for not participating.

20. Athletically Related Activity
A social media post by an athletics department staff member that includes reference to:
An out-of-season activity.
A specific SA or identifiable group of SAs.
Would be considered both:
Reporting back.
Recording attendance.
The two areas where we most frequently see social media come into play are in reporting the activity back to the sport-specific coaches and in recording attendance or participation in some way.
Any social media post by any athletic department staff member about out of season activity for a specific student-athlete or group of student-athletes would be both reporting back and recording attendance.

21. RSRO Question
Can our strength and conditioning coach post photos of voluntary workouts on Instagram?
No.
Identifying SAs who are participating in the workout is recording attendance.
Making the information available to the strength and conditioning coach’s followers (which may include sport-specific coaches) is reporting back.
So let’s apply that general principle to a real-life situation.
This institution wanted to know if their strength and conditioning coach (who was certified to conduct voluntary out of season workouts) can post photos of those workouts on Instagram? What do you think?
No. Why not?
If you have a photo of a student-athlete participating in a workout, that is clearly identifying at least one student-athlete who is participating in the workout. Then posting that photo online (in other words, making that photo available to the student-athlete’s coaches) would be reporting back on that student’s participation in the workout.
At that point, the workout itself is no longer voluntary – and is therefore impermissible.

22. RSRO Question
This Facebook post was on an institution’s basketball team page.
The institution’s SAs are in charge of managing the content.
So here’s an example of a Facebook post about an out of season workout. This post appeared on the basketball team’s team page – but cross country student-athlete’s manage the team’s account. Is this an issue?

23. RSRO Answer A team account is subject to the legislation.
What if this was the SA’s private account?
Ok, as long as the SA was not being directed to post that information by someone within the athletics department.
Remember back to the very beginning of the session – team accounts are subject to the legislation. So even if a student-athlete is managing a team account, a team account post about an out of season workout is impermissible recording and impermissible reporting back.
So if any of your coaches are having their student-athletes operate their team social media accounts, you need to make sure that those student-athletes are appropriately educated on the types of social media posts that are acceptable.
What if the student-athlete had posted the same thing on his own private account?
Remember that a student-athlete’s account is only subject to the legislation if the student-athlete is acting at the direction of the athletics department. So a student-athlete posting on their own account about an out of season workout would be outside the scope of the legislation.

24. Strength and Conditioning Apps
Cell phone apps that allow an account administrator to send out-of-season workouts (or game film) to SAs.
Many of these apps have a function that allows the account administrator to:
Check progress on workouts.
Review SA notes regarding out-of-season workouts.
Determine whether SAs have watched video clips.
Impermissible to use any of these functions on these apps.
One last thing I want to touch on – and I go back and forth on whether this falls under the social media umbrella or not – are these new apps that allow a coach to send workouts or send game film or otherwise interact electronically with student-athletes.
These apps most often allow an account administrator to send an out of season workout or game film to student-athletes. Many of them also have a function that allows that account administrator to check progress on workouts, to see which workouts have been completed, to review workout notes or to see whether student-athletes have watched video clips.
Out of season, using any function to view whether or not a student-athlete is participating in any athletically related activity would be impermissible.
So if your institution is using one of these apps – best case scenario you turn off all of those tracking features. If you cannot turn them off – you need to feel very comfortable that your coaches understand that they cannot use those features to view any out of season athletically related activity.

25. Promotional Activities
Let’s move on to discussing the ways our current student-athletes can use social media for promotional purposes.

26. Institutional, Charitable, Educational, Nonprofit Promotions
SAs are permitted to use their name and/or likeness to promote institutional, charitable, educational or nonprofit entities.
Platform or medium does not matter – can include social media.
The provisions of Bylaw must be met.
Bylaw
Anytime you hear me talk about promotional activities – my first question is always going to be whether that promotional activity is on behalf of an institutional, charitable, educational or nonprofit promotion.
The reason I always start there is because our legislation around promotional activities for institutional, charitable, educational or nonprofit entities is slightly more permissive. In general, student-athletes are permitted to use their name or likeness to promote these entities as long as the provisions of Bylaw are met.
If the provisions of Bylaw are met – student-athletes can use any platform or medium to engage in that promotional activity – obviously including social media.

27. RSRO Question So what does that look like?
This student-athlete was participating in an institutional fundraiser – specifically, Bobby’s baseball team was trying to raise money to cover the costs of a spring break trip. So Bobby tweeted about the location of the team car wash.
Because Bobby is using his own twitter account, he is obviously using his name to promote this institutional fundraiser. Is this permissible?

28. RSRO Answer Are the provisions of Bylaw 12.5.1.1 met?
If so, this tweet is permissible.
A SA is using his name/image/likeness to promote his institutional baseball team.
Yes. Again, this is an institutional fundraiser. So you should ensure that the provisions of Bylaw are met – but, if so, Bobby can use social media to promote his institutional fundraiser.

29. Promotions for a Commercial Product or Service
Promotion versus opinion?
SAs are not permitted to promote a commercial product or service, unless…
SA became involved for reasons independent of athletics.
No reference to individual’s involvement in intercollegiate athletics.
Paid going rate.
Bylaws and
Things get a little bit stickier when we start talking about a promotion for a commercial product or service. The first question that we need to answer is whether this is truly a promotion or whether the student-athlete is acting on his or her own and is simply expressing an opinion. That can be a little bit of a gray area, but we will look at an example in a few minutes here.
For now, let’s just assume we are talking about an actual promotion of a commercial product or service. Whenever a student-athlete asks you about promoting a commercial product or service, start with a “no” and then try and determine whether you can work your way to a yes.
So again, the default rule is that a student-athlete is not permitted to promote a commercial product or service (and, therefore, obviously could not use social media to promote a commercial product or service). However, if the student-athlete became involved in the promotion for reasons independent of athletics, there is no reference in the promotion to the student-athlete’s intercollegiate athletics involvement and the student-athlete is paid the going rate – a student-athlete could actually promote a commercial product or service (and could use social media for that promotion).

30. RSRO Question
SA, without any encouragement from Adidas or the institution, sent this snapchat.
Permissible?
Yes. This is simply a SA, of her own volition, expressing her opinion.
So let’s look at a couple of examples. This student-athlete, without any encouragement from Adidas or the institution, sent this snapchat message about how much she loves Adidas.
What do you think?
Because this is simply the student-athlete stating an opinion and not making a specific call to action or encouraging others to go buy a product, this is simply this student-athlete’s opinion and does not rise to the level of promoting a commercial product or service.

31. RSRO Question
So here’s another example. Kristin here loves cats. And Kristin chooses to officially partner with Audrey’s pet store to help Audrey’s sell cat supplies.

32. RSRO Answer The tweet appears to be consistent with Bylaw 12.5.1.3.
Not involved for reasons related to athletics.
No reference to intercollegiate athletics involvement.
Paid going rate.
So what’s the problem?
So this is a student-athlete promoting a commercial product or service. So I recommend you start at a no and work your way backwards.
As you work your way backwards on this one, you realize that the student-athlete did not become involved for reasons related to athletics, there doesn’t appear to be a reference to athletics and the student-athlete is paid the going rate.
But our staff still responded restrictively to this question – why?

33. RSRO Question
That was a little bit of a trick question because I didn’t give you all of the information you needed.
But if you open Kristin’s twitter profile, earlier that day – she sent out this tweet.

34. RSRO Answer
Part of Kristin’s twitter activity has reference to her intercollegiate athletics participation.
So Kristin could not use this twitter account to promote a commercial product or service.
She cannot meet the component of Bylaw that requires there be no reference to her participation in intercollegiate athletics.
Because her twitter feed DOES reference her involvement in intercollegiate athletics, she doesn’t meet that particular prong of the exception. Since she doesn’t meet the exception, Kristin would not be able to tweet about her partnership with Audrey’s pet store.

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