Don't let Juicy Campus define UA students
The Traveler Editorial Board
Issue date: 10/1/08 Section: Opinion
Gone are the days of playground rumors and scrawled notes in bathroom stalls. Baseless, trashy gossip has found its newest medium: Juicy Campus.
The concept of the Web site is nauseating: anyone - and by that, we mean absolutely anyone - can post whatever online comments they please - true or not - in a completely anonymous format.
So unlike middle-school rumors and bathroom-stall messages, Juicy Campus makes defamatory, unsubstantiated gossip more permanent and public than ever, and the cowards behind those messages have absolutely no repercussions for their actions (except bad karma, perhaps).
So how could such a Web site ever be allowed to stick around?
Juicy Campus is defended by the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which protects it and similar Web sites by stating that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."
Not quite as eloquently, the creators of Juicy Campus put it like this on their Web site: "We comply with lawful subpoenas because we have to, but if some university president called us asking for a favor, we'd tell him to go screw himself."
Just the kind of organization you want to take part in, right?
We hope not.
We're not suggesting that censorship is the answer to this problem - even if the UA administration decided to block Juicy Campus from UA users, it wouldn't make the Web site go away.
Instead, we're issuing a plea to UA students to stop contributing to the insanity. Members of the university community probably know someone whose reputation has been smeared because of the Web site, or maybe they've been the target of gossip themselves.
So let's stop the madness here and now.
Those who are sitting in their rooms, writing slanderous posts and relishing in the anonymity of their actions should think again about how they'd react if their names appeared on the Web site. And, if nothing else, perhaps they should remember that subpoenas could be issued to reveal their identities, and, as more and more lives are negatively affected by the Web site, Juicy Campus will inevitably lose hype and possibly be shut down.
The UA is just one of hundreds of schools listed on the anonymous Web site, and the university will remain a part of the equation as long as the site sticks around. But by boycotting Juicy Campus altogether, let the creators know that delighting in such a sickening Web site is simply not something most UA students want to do.
The concept of the Web site is nauseating: anyone - and by that, we mean absolutely anyone - can post whatever online comments they please - true or not - in a completely anonymous format.
So unlike middle-school rumors and bathroom-stall messages, Juicy Campus makes defamatory, unsubstantiated gossip more permanent and public than ever, and the cowards behind those messages have absolutely no repercussions for their actions (except bad karma, perhaps).
So how could such a Web site ever be allowed to stick around?
Juicy Campus is defended by the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which protects it and similar Web sites by stating that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."
Not quite as eloquently, the creators of Juicy Campus put it like this on their Web site: "We comply with lawful subpoenas because we have to, but if some university president called us asking for a favor, we'd tell him to go screw himself."
Just the kind of organization you want to take part in, right?
We hope not.
We're not suggesting that censorship is the answer to this problem - even if the UA administration decided to block Juicy Campus from UA users, it wouldn't make the Web site go away.
Instead, we're issuing a plea to UA students to stop contributing to the insanity. Members of the university community probably know someone whose reputation has been smeared because of the Web site, or maybe they've been the target of gossip themselves.
So let's stop the madness here and now.
Those who are sitting in their rooms, writing slanderous posts and relishing in the anonymity of their actions should think again about how they'd react if their names appeared on the Web site. And, if nothing else, perhaps they should remember that subpoenas could be issued to reveal their identities, and, as more and more lives are negatively affected by the Web site, Juicy Campus will inevitably lose hype and possibly be shut down.
The UA is just one of hundreds of schools listed on the anonymous Web site, and the university will remain a part of the equation as long as the site sticks around. But by boycotting Juicy Campus altogether, let the creators know that delighting in such a sickening Web site is simply not something most UA students want to do.
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