By Emilia Benton
College students would have to be living under a rock to not know about social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. However, I myself had never heard of the recently-launched JuicyCampus.com until I stumbled upon the press it’s been getting lately-all of it negative.
JuicyCampus.com is a Web site containing a endless number of message boards that are all intended for the posting of campus gossip. That’s right: the site’s creators urge users to post threads such as campus hook-ups, which students are the most popular and which are overweight, as if they were in middle school. How immature is that? When I read the online Associated Press article about the site, it reminded me of the “Burn Book” concept from the movie “Mean Girls.”
Launched last fall, JuicyCampus primarily consisted of seven campuses, including Duke, UCLA and Loyola Marymount. It recently expanded to include 50 more campuses (which currently does not include Hofstra). College administrators have no control over the site, since students can easily view it outside of campus computer networks.
Bearing no content restrictions, JuicyCampus promises anonymity by blocking its discussion boards from coming up in search sites such as Google, as well as by recommending that posters look into free, online services to cloak their IP addresses. The site claims that it won’t hand over server data over complaints of “ruined reputations” or “hurt feelings,” from message boards with titles such as “Top Ten Freshmen Sluts” and “The Jews Ruin This School,” though the creators behind it thankfully have enough sense to take threats seriously, specifically those foreshadowing campus violence. A former student at Loyola Marymount was arrested after allegedly posting threats of a campus shooting spree on the site. Similarly, the dangers of social network bullying was highlighted in the news coverage of a teenage girl in Missouri who committed suicide after receiving hateful messages, which were later found to have been a hoax, on her MySpace page.
College students normally lean toward having more accessibility when it comes to Internet freedom. While many have certainly raised questions about online libel laws, JuicyCampus is protected by section 230 of the Communication Decency Act of 1996, which protects Web site administrators from being responsible for those who post defamatory comments on their site’s message boards. Even so, many students, including posters on the site, are fighting hard to ban JuicyCampus, in an effort to save students and their respective reputations from their peers.. Pepperdine University recently voted 23-5 to ask for a ban, after students participated in a lengthy debate over free-speech limits after a transfer student was humiliated on the Web site less than a week after arriving on campus. Even Duke University, the alma mater of Matt Ivester, the Web site’s founder, has called for the shut-down of the site.
While I’m disgusted to see so many students close to my age participating in discussion boards dedicated to ruining each other’s reputations, I’m relieved that at the same time so many are intelligent enough to realize that promoting such intolerance against our peers is completely unnecessary. In the words of one poster, “let’s not ruin each other’s lives.”
We’re all aware of the dangers of posting questionable photos and content online, as privacy and social networking sites obviously don’t mix. But with the existence of JuicyCampus, it could be difficult to hold on to your clean reputation if an immature classmate decides to post potentially libelous information using your full name. Someone’s “juicy” account could cost someone else their career, as well as emotional suffering.
JuicyCampus relies on advertising to keep the Web site running, which is only guaranteed so long as the Web site’s traffic stays up. So do your part to prevent the posting of malicious gossip by boycotting this ridiculous site.
Emilia Benton is a junior print journalism student. You may e-mail her at [email protected].