Janet Dudley-Eshbach, President of Salisbury University in Salisbury, Maryland, is the most recent victim of the dreaded New Media Scandal Club, caught up her very own online media turmoil. In her attempt to connect with family and close friends, Dudley-Eshbach created her own Facebook.com profile and posted pictures of her and her family on vacation and such. Unfortunately for Dudley-Eshbach, these photos contained one photo of a family vacation in Mexico where she was pretending to swing a stick at a local man who was hugging her daughter, which wouldn’t be such a big deal except that her photo caption said she had to “beat off the Mexicans because they were constantly flirting with my daughter.”

An interesting thing about racism and prejudice – many people don’t even know they have a prejudice until it’s exposed to the examining eye of the general public. What Janet Dudley-Eshbach wrote in the caption was probably perfectly funny and acceptable to her close knot of friends and family, who perhaps think as she does, but when this is shown to the outside world, it becomes very apparent how inappropriate this caption actually is. Especially from a President of a University. Especially from a President of a University who is also a specialist in Latin American studies.

Come now. How can someone so educated be so naïve? In this day and age, any public figure of any stature, be they a Senator, business leader, or school president, must be infinitesimally careful about what they publicly share. Facebook is public, no matter how hard you may try to make it private. You will be found. You will be exposed. You must know better. How long will it take for people to comprehend this? How many more scandals? These affect more than just the person involved – it also affects the person’s family, career, and business.

What can a business do? A business’s first level of defense is to educate their employees about the use of any social media such as Facebook, MySpace, etc – that these profiles are indeed public, will be found, and anything in them can and will be used against you. A business must educate its employees in order to protect itself and its employees from embarrassment.

If that fails to work, then a business must turn to quick and thorough damage control. Apologize. Correct the offensive material. To Dudley-Eshbach’s credit, she has apologized and removed her Facebook profile. This was the correct thing for her to do to help correct the damage she caused to herself and her school. It’s a hard lesson to learn, though, especially after the damage has been done.