I NEVER thought I would find myself defending a gossip forum riddled with sexual promiscuity and homophobic attacks. Juicy Campus is a menace that combines anonymous, libelous and derogatory college hearsay with almost non-existent regulation. This destructive mix has spawned emotional breakdowns, legal actions and university-sponsored boycotts.
Joining this wave of hysteria, Student Council passed a resolution last week that encouraged students to boycott the site, authorized Council to contact Juicy Campus to take the University's name off their list and also allowed it to contact Facebook to discontinue Juicy Campus advertisements to the University network. Student Council President Matt Schrimper said in an interview that "the issue clearly falls directly within our mission to improve the quality of life of every student at the University".
While Council was motivated by the same disgust as many other browsers of the site, it had no business telling University students which Internet sites not to browse. Further, by publicizing the nature of the Web site, Council only accelerated the popularity of the site and undermined its very own objectives. Lastly, Council wrongly diagnosed the overall nature of the problem as site-specific, rather than rooted in the reality of large swaths of college-going students.
Council is supposed to promote and solve important issues that all students care about, such as textbook legislation or curriculum reform. By elevating the regulation of a gossip forum to an "important issue" status, Council makes a mockery of its responsibilities and appears to privilege this trivial matter over other structural reforms that need urgent attention.
Yes, some individuals in the more than 50 institutions that the site covers have suffered emotional distress from message posts. But they do so because they make the personal choice of being affected by anonymous posts that have little credibility. Mature and intelligent college students should be able to ignore this fantastic rumor-mongering and tune it out from their lives. Gossip is unfortunately commonplace within society as a whole, but responses to it are based on private decisions to either ignore it or let it affect you negatively.
Council chose neither. Instead, it passed a meaningless resolution that does nothing but facilitate the rising tide of Juicy Campus' popularity. Regulating Facebook advertisements does not fall within Council's primary responsibilities. Nor will it do anything because Facebook will preserve its right like any other organization to accept advertisement funds from any Web site it pleases. Similarly, taking the University off the Juicy Campus list will not accomplish anything because there are other Web sites which perform the same function.
This lack of benefits is further exacerbated by massive costs that run contrary to Council's objective. By passing the resolution, Council has only added fuel to fiery gossip. It will probably be remembered for placing the University among the ranks of Pepperdine University, which passed a resolution urging site prohibition, only for the resolution writer, Austin Maness, to later lament to the International Herald Tribune, "Looking back, it was a mistake. Curiosity killed the cat, and everyone started going to the site."
Underlying the farce of this whole Council soap opera is its unwillingness to admit that Juicy Campus is based on juice squeezed from an already rumor-driven college culture of drunkenness, sex, homosexuality and much more. Juicy Campus is not the issue. The real problem is a culture that both thrives on the hydra of gossip for information and also affords great concern for the reputation upon which such unreliable knowledge is built. If we don't exercise our rationality and intelligence to relegate gossip to a role of mere fleeting hilarity, this phenomenon will continue to affect us dearly when it rears its heads in a world of increased inter-connectedness.
As for where to draw the line between harassment and harmful threats on Juicy Campus, it seems to me that this is already being traced as we speak, regardless of any fruitless Council legislation. In December, student Carlos Huerta was traced, arrested and then released when police cooperated with Juicy Campus upon viewing his post about starting a shooting spree. Authorities have also taken action without the Web site's cooperation, such as the recent example where they traced a post to student George So, who wondered in a post if he could get classes cancelled by starting a shooting rampage.
If we want to stop the hydra-headed proliferation of rumor-mongering sites like Juicy Campus, then we should focus on where the juice comes from, not where it is displayed. We should try to deal with this phenomenon through a variety of private measures from ignorance to humor to even posting corrections on the site, rather than having a patriarchal institution telling us what to do. Because surely you, as a average mature college student, can think of things juicier than fresh gossip. If not, then perhaps you should quit blaming a Web site for merely publicizing your narrow concerns.
Prashanth Parameswaran's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at pparameswaran@cavalierdaily.
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