Photographs of underage students sloppy drunk clutching red Solo cups.

A threatening rant about an administrator.

A link to a group that advocates the propagation of Asian fetishes.

All of these have appeared on college students' profiles posted to popular online social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Xanga.

By now, that's old news in the fast-paced World Wide Web.

But for the first time this summer, college administrators are taking time out of their annual freshmen orientation sessions with soon-to-be college students and their parents to talk about these sites and the potential harm and good that can come of them.

"Our general attitude is, we're not going to be able to stop it. So, why don't we role-model some good behavior?" said Hugh Brown, associate director of residence life at James Madison University.

JMU, Virginia Tech, Radford University, the University of Virginia and George Mason University will all broach the subject of these online hangouts with incoming students.

Many of those students will already have accounts on these sites before they even set up their dorm rooms or attend their first classes.

Despite the media glare on the nefarious use of the sites by stalkers, young people use the networks mostly for meeting new friends and connecting with old ones, Brown said.

Though Facebook has been around since 2004 and MySpace since 2003 in its current incarnation, college administrators learned of the popularity of the sites among their students in the past year, said Shawn McGuirk of Fitchburg State College in Massachusetts.

McGuirk has given several seminars to colleagues nationwide about Facebook in which he talks about the positive and negative aspects of the site. He tells them he uses the site to connect with students.

Though he has no hard numbers, McGuirk has heard from numerous administrators nationwide that students' online lives are front and center in freshmen orientation this year.

A main question that deans of students and others are asking of incoming students fall into the pattern of "Would you want [fill in the blank] to see your profile?" (Insert grandmother, potential employer, English professor, police officer or college administrator.)

"Sometimes it amazes me how much information students put online," Michael Mardis, the dean of students at Radford, told a group of about 150 incoming students Tuesday.

"You don't want to put something out there you don't want out there. It's public."

When Mardis asked -- rhetorically -- whether some in the room have online profiles that they wouldn't want him as the dean of students to see, a few hands went up.

Hundreds of students and their families have already come to RU's well-manicured campus for one of the five two-day orientation sessions.

Like other colleges, RU separates parents from students for at least part of orientation. The parents of the same students in Mardis' session Tuesday heard a similar message Monday from the vice president for student affairs, Norleen Pomerantz.

Pomerantz, like Mardis, specifically brought up the concern that potential employers could view students' profiles and might rescind job offers based on what they see -- even if online posts are meant only as inside jokes among college friends.

Kim Gore, whose daughter will attend RU in the fall and whose son is a current Tech student, said she is not worried about what her children post online because she has their passwords for Facebook and e-mail accounts.

Her children know she could peer into their online worlds anytime and that she'll pipe up if she sees something inappropriate.

Even though she was aware of the sites before orientation, Gore said she thinks universities should discuss the issue.

"There are so many parents who are oblivious," she said.

Neither Tech nor JMU plans to speak specifically with parents about the sites.

JMU's Brown and administrators at colleges such as Virginia Tech and UVa have entrusted their student orientation leaders with the task of talking with incoming students about these sites.

They say current students can deliver the message in a less didactic way than administrators.

"We find a better response when we do things in our small groups with student orientation leaders," said Rick Sparks of Tech's new student orientation program. "They tend to think that what they are hearing is how it is."

Tech has asked each of its 30 student leaders to consider what's on their profiles, too -- because the roughly 5,000 students who attend July's orientation programs will likely search for the leaders' profiles when they return home.

A large part of the discussions is about online safety, with a focus on reminding students about privacy settings that can limit access to their profiles.

Sparks said he wants students to think hard before they broadcast their exact locations, class schedules or cellphone numbers.

New Tech students will receive a handout that lays out facts about cybersafety and cybercivility.

The document, created by Mercyhurst College in Pennsylvania, stresses that the impression students make in online profiles may be the only one that peers, professors and others will ever have of them.

Administrators at JMU have made the point more clearly by encouraging students in their orientation booklet to contact their new roommates before checking their Facebook profiles.

"These profiles don't always provide the most accurate information about students," it reads.

But administrators may not want to beat the drum too loudly.

Many high school students have heard these same concerns from their high school counselors and teachers.

Frank Pleta, a 17-year-old who will attend RU in the fall, and his friend Mike Escario both have accounts on Facebook and MySpace.

They said they have heard ad nauseam about the dangers of sexual predators and others online who could hurt them.

"We know already," Pleta said.