Dear President Schubert,

Please accept my friendship on Facebook. It’s been about a month since I requested you, and quite frankly you have broken some serious Facebook rules of etiquette by waiting this long to confirm my request.

I look longingly at my notification box at least six times a day hoping to see that magical red box appear notifying me, “Phil Schubert has accepted your friend request.”

I know being the president of a premier university like ACU is a full-time job, and I understand your family devotion, but as part of the Mobile Learning Initiative, I think it is only appropriate to use your mobile device to quickly confirm my friend request.

Furthermore, I think we would make excellent Facebook friends. We both own TOMS, we both work at ACU and we are both dedicated to being innovative, exceptional and real. From what I understand from reading “ACU Today” – not your profile, because we aren’t Facebook friends yet, and most of it is blocked – you are quite the baseball fan. I, too, enjoy watching and playing America’s favorite pastime.

If we became friends on Facebook, perhaps we could engage in witty banter about ACU baseball games, food in the Bean or new merchandise in The Campus Store.

I would love to comment on your family vacation pictures, funny status’ and all of the Youtube videos you post.

I might even consider investing my time in starting a farm on Farmville so we could be neighbors, taking care of each others animals and crops.

Whether you like it or not, our culture has decided that Facebook friendship is the measure of real relationships. How can you expect to continue our real-life friendship if we can’t see what each other is doing every second of the day?

At the risk of admitting I’ve done a bit of “Facebook stalking,” I noticed you have 202 friends – not an outrageous number. I also noticed you’ve been accepting other requests on a somewhat regular basis. I’m trying to keep my chin up, telling myself that one day you will confirm that we are, in fact, friends on Facebook and therefore friends in real life.

Sincerely,

Linda Bailey