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Spillin' the juice

Cassidy Pazyniak

Before the explosion of the Internet, gossip, insults and "for a good time call 867-5309" were written on bathroom stalls. But now cyberspace is the forum for the dirt on who, what, where, when and why.

JuicyCampus.com, an online gossip Web site created in August 2007, has forums catered to students at 380 schools such as Boston College, Duke University and now Miami University.

At Juicy Campus, users can write whatever they like about whomever they like-no Sharpie marker required.

For those who thought they could escape high school drama and backstabbing after arriving at college-think again. The site has topics like "Who's the biggest slut on campus?" "The hottest sorority," "Gay or not?" and "Black people..."

Any topic-no matter how risqué-can be posted on Juicy Campus.

Anything goes

Juicy Campus is designed to let students post whatever they want to write-all anonymously-luring in students with the disclaimer, "C'mon. Give us the juice. Posts are totally, 100 percent anonymous."

And with more than 44,000 posts, students are doing just that.

Once a post is created on a particular campus forum, other students from any and every school can "agree" or "disagree." The percentages of these choices are then posted below the original comment. And just like any online forum, students can reply to posts below the original statements.

So, when forums speak of "Hot desperate girls to avoid," this burning question can be answered by all willing males who often choose to list the full name of girls they believe fit the category.

After posting, students can "tag" their posts or label them to make future searches easier for other users. Recent most popular tags include sororities, gay, sex and Greek life.

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While Miami is a supported campus, Miami's forum is not as active as other university pages. With less than a dozen posts, the subjects reference "sorostitutes" as well as opinions of the best and worst sororities and fraternities.

Junior Abigail Perkins said she heard Juicy Campus is much more popular on other campuses. Perkins, however, expressed her concern that Miami's page will become as offensive as others.

"I've heard of it at (the University of Illinois)," Perkins said. "I'd definitely say (Juicy Campus) coming to Miami opens up a lot of problems, especially because it's a smaller school than some of the others."

Going after the gossip

With the added courage of anonymity, students may not realize that posts are not easily erased.

One student from University of Pennsylvania tried to apologize for a previous post but failed to recognize several people had already read the post, giving them plenty of time to start the rumor mill.

"Sarah made me mad a few days ago and I took her past dating and sex life history and used it against her," the anonymous blogger wrote. "I knew these things in private, things she probably wanted no one else to know that I told the world. I had no right to exploit her. Please disregard that post."

Martha Smith, a first-year, said that if a similar situation happened to her, she would be extremely upset.

"I'd be mad," Smith said. "There's no way to advocate for yourself in that situation. Just hearing about (the Web site) really made me angry."

Victims of the Web site as well as others who share Smith's feelings have taken a stand and made a call to action against Juicy Campus.

Connor Diemand-Yauman, the junior class president at Princeton University, took matters into his own hands.

Diemand-Yauman started the campaign "Own What You Think." The campaign, in his words, fought "a culture of gossip and anonymous character assassination."

To Diemand-Yauman, fighting Juicy Campus is about more than just online gossip.

"It's treating Juicy Campus as a symptom of a larger problem," Diemand-Yauman said. "My intent was to draw attention to why we responded the way we did when we were given the opportunity to say whatever we wanted, why did we choose to say the most hurtful things we did."

Diemand-Yauman initially started a Web site to petition against Juicy Campus.

The site reads, "We, the undersigned, commit ourselves to taking a stand against ... acts of ethical and intellectual cowardice ... Anonymity may have its place in certain kinds of political speech, journalistic endeavors and other arenas, but its overuse and abuse is not consistent with the standard of behavior we, as members of an academic community, wish to maintain."

To date the petition has 1,284 signatures.

As the anti-Juicy Campus campaign continued, students at Princeton were given free T-shirts saying "anonymity = cowardice." Additionally, a giant projector of the "love wall" was set up on campus where positive sayings such as, "I appreciate ___ as my friend" could be displayed for all the read. Orbit Gum was distributed to encourage people to "clean out their mouths."

Dieman-Yauman said he is skeptical about the ethics of the Juicy Campus administration.

"It's funny ... after we've drawn so much press to (the site)... Princeton suddenly was taken off the server," Dieman-Yauman said. "They have an interesting way of dealing with problems-they just delete them."

Diemand-Yauman isn't the only one taking arms against the Web site.

As reported on The Chronicle of Higher Education Web site, consumer-affair officials in New Jersey are looking to bring legal action against Juicy Campus, as explained in a March 2008 article titled "New Jersey Investigates Juicy Campus Gossip Site for Possible Consumer-Fraud Violations."

Juicy Campus, however, has taken great lengths to protect itself, as the article reported. Matt Ivester, a Duke alumnus, addressed specific concerns about the defamation of character in his February 2008 blog.

"Juicy Campus is immune from liability arising from content posted by users," Ivester wrote in his blog, citing Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Under the act, Juicy Campus is considered a third party and not responsible for what people post on the site.

Free speech with a twist

Despite the potential for damaging and offensive posts, others argue the battle against Juicy Campus is a slap in the face to democracy and freedom of speech.

In a Facebook.com group entitled "Students Against Juicy Campus," a post rejects the group's desire to limit Juicy Campus.

"Free speech is a right that people have always valued whether or not they were lucky enough enjoy it," the post read. "We, as Americans, are lucky enough! You want to suppress this right by silencing the people that use the site. I do not support slander or defamation of ones character, but when you censor the freest of all forms of communication (the Internet), everyone loses. The problem is not the Web site but the people. Create a group to fix them!"

To junior Erica Beletti, Juicy Campus readers should take content for exactly what it is-gossip.

"I think people need to remember that some of the stuff can be truthful, but others are just lies," Beletti said. "It's just an online gossip site that is mindless fun for some people."

Junior Mark Loudenslagel said he understood the argument about banning Juicy Campus as a violation to free speech, but Loudenslagel said the impact on others makes the argument difficult. From a history major's perspective, he said despite technological advancements, society can still regress.

Claire Wagner, director of news and public information at Miami, said free speech should not be taken lightly.

"I don't think that free speech can be stopped," Wagner said. "But I hope that our students understand the difference between credible sources and anonymous sources and also not to libel somebody by putting up harmful material."

Cheryl Gibbs, assistant director of the department of journalism, expressed concerns of what forums similar to Juicy Campus have done to the Internet.

"My concerns about anonymity on the Internet-it really gives people the ability to do what you might call 'throwing eggs from behind bushes,'" Gibbs said. "The Internet opened up many amazing possibilities. On the other hand, it has created a forum to show you how ugly people can be when they're allowed to do that kind of thing anonymously."

Anonymity withstanding, Loudenslagel said he is concerned about the effects of naming others in a space as public as Juicy Campus.

"(Juicy Campus) is similar to McCarthy's black list during the 1940s and the 1950s with the red scare," Loudenslagel said. "It ruins people's lives like that."


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