Spring Break
MAELSTROM: Gossipers go wild: Brandeis edition
by Rebecca Blady
Acting Forum Editor
Columnists | 11/4/08
Posted online at 1:04 AM EST on 11/4/08
Before you read this article, which discusses the issues surrounding the notorious Internet gossip forum JuicyCampus.com, I must beg of you one favor:
Do not visit the Web site.
It's tempting. The site divulges all of the behind-the-scenes activities of campus social life. You can find the best party spots, the easiest girls and the most absurd rumors. Some of the information is true. Most of it is concocted by bored first-years. Either way, information is there, often posing potential harm to students. And I promise that your lives will undoubtedly continue without a visit to this notorious Web page.
As much as this seems like a high school-age endeavor, a 1995 Duke graduate created this Web site, where students can discuss, at length, such vulgar topics on their individual college's page with the comfort of total anonymity. As long as visitors to the site confirm that they are 18 years old, they are free to explore the often fabricated and mean-spirited gossip that abounds on JuicyCampus.
And posts get read. For example, approximately 2,300 views have accumulated under one single discussion topic debating the reputations of various female Brandeis students that was started on Oct. 21 on Brandeis' page. Posts on JuicyCampus are explicit and merciless. They target our classmates by full name and often divulge more information than one would deem appropriate for public knowledge.
But since JuicyCampus guarantees the anonymity of its posts' authors, students slam their classmates' reputations without thinking twice. Thought you left this nonsense behind when you graduated high school?
Well, you thought wrong. JuicyCampus and its defenders successfully rebutt your criticisms with that quintessential university value: free speech.
The International Herald Tribune conducted an interview with Michael Fertik, a graduate of Harvard Law School and the founder of reputationdefender.com, a service that helps clients remove defamatory material about themselves from the Internet. "Legally, JuicyCampus is fully, absolutely immune, no matter what it runs on its site from users, just like AOL is not responsible for nasty comments in its AOL chat rooms," said Fertik. Fertik explained that while victims could sue individual posters for libelous or defamatory remarks, the Communications Decency Act of 1996 protects the Web site's owner from lawsuit. And finding those individuals responsible for particularly vulgar posts is nearly impossible.
Do not visit the Web site.
It's tempting. The site divulges all of the behind-the-scenes activities of campus social life. You can find the best party spots, the easiest girls and the most absurd rumors. Some of the information is true. Most of it is concocted by bored first-years. Either way, information is there, often posing potential harm to students. And I promise that your lives will undoubtedly continue without a visit to this notorious Web page.
As much as this seems like a high school-age endeavor, a 1995 Duke graduate created this Web site, where students can discuss, at length, such vulgar topics on their individual college's page with the comfort of total anonymity. As long as visitors to the site confirm that they are 18 years old, they are free to explore the often fabricated and mean-spirited gossip that abounds on JuicyCampus.
And posts get read. For example, approximately 2,300 views have accumulated under one single discussion topic debating the reputations of various female Brandeis students that was started on Oct. 21 on Brandeis' page. Posts on JuicyCampus are explicit and merciless. They target our classmates by full name and often divulge more information than one would deem appropriate for public knowledge.
But since JuicyCampus guarantees the anonymity of its posts' authors, students slam their classmates' reputations without thinking twice. Thought you left this nonsense behind when you graduated high school?
Well, you thought wrong. JuicyCampus and its defenders successfully rebutt your criticisms with that quintessential university value: free speech.
The International Herald Tribune conducted an interview with Michael Fertik, a graduate of Harvard Law School and the founder of reputationdefender.com, a service that helps clients remove defamatory material about themselves from the Internet. "Legally, JuicyCampus is fully, absolutely immune, no matter what it runs on its site from users, just like AOL is not responsible for nasty comments in its AOL chat rooms," said Fertik. Fertik explained that while victims could sue individual posters for libelous or defamatory remarks, the Communications Decency Act of 1996 protects the Web site's owner from lawsuit. And finding those individuals responsible for particularly vulgar posts is nearly impossible.
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