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The important question is actually "should there be legal duties", which you can determine from the original point: "I am just shocked at the amount of control, influence, and involvement into their students' lives universities are expected to have."

I (for one) believe universities should not have a legal duty to prevent online harrassment, even though it may be of interest to universities.

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Kindly, I don't think that is the important question because that's not how legal duty works. Basically, there are always legal duties, some of which are codified & some of which are common law.

I'm not arguing there is always a legal duty here, nor that there always should be. I'm stating that whether there is a duty will always depend on the individual fact pattern & the laws/regulations that apply to that specific University.

Not only do Universities operate under different jurisdictions with different rules & laws--but their level of "control, influence and involvement" varies along too. This changes what duty there is--as do the specific facts.So such generalizations are not applicable.

Hope this makes sense; its not easy to explain!

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