Blogging site Juicy Campus replaced

By Winston Yu

Not even Juicy Campus, the infamous college gossip Web site, was able to survive the troubled economic times. Juicy Campus was finally brought down, not by the better part of human nature or by the threat of legal action, but simply because it couldn't make enough money through ad revenue.

In early February, as students logged on to the site, they found that it had been removed, to the disappointment of some and the relief of others. Instead, students were redirected to CollegeACB.com, which essentially markets itself as an improvement on Juicy Campus's model.

CollegeACB, which stands for Anonymous Confession Board, claims to set itself apart from Juicy Campus by "promoting actual discussion, not provoking salacious posts or personal attacks."

A press release issued by CollegeACB's founders said this new site "consistently hosts a higher level of discourse -- while still making room for the occasional gossip post."

One look at Santa Clara's page on CollegeACB proves otherwise.

It still offers users the ability to post comments anonymously and allows them to blog about the same trivial gossip threads as Juicy Campus did. Recent CollegeACB posts included "Biggest Slut" and "Hawaiians: Do We Need Them."

However derogatory and crude it may have been, there was no denying that Juicy Campus was popular. It began at seven campuses in 2007 and soon spread nationwide.

As the site's popularity grew, it attracted criticism from both administrators and students alike. Timothy Chester, chief information officer at Pepperdine University, even went so far as to call it a "'virtual bathroom wall' for abusive, degrading and hateful speech."

Several student government associations asked their schools to ban the site, which some schools like Tennessee State University did.

In general, movements to have universities prevent access to the site took universities uncomfortably close to the thin line of censorship, which the site's founder, Matt Ivester, continually used to defend the lack of moderation or regulation of Juicy Campus's thread discussions.

When Juicy Campus added Santa Clara to its list of schools, it set off a frenzy of outrage from individuals offended by the nature of the posted content.

This didn't prevent the hundreds of posts from individuals who took advantage of the site's ability to remain anonymous to start threads such as the "Biggest ho at SCU."

In response, Associated Students set up a task force to address the issue of negative online blogging, with an emphasis on Juicy Campus in particular.

The university administration was hesitant to entertain the idea of blocking access to the site entirely, instead working with AS to discourage blogging or posting on the site as well as appealing to students' better nature, encouraging them to be more respectful and mindful.

The task force's chair, sophomore Chris Mosier, directed the student government's response to Juicy Campus, not focusing exclusively on the Web site itself, but rather the larger issue that the site raised.

Mosier and fellow AS members had students sign a pledge not to participate in negative online blogging and handed out wristbands with the phrases "Rise Above It" and "Keep it Classy, SCU."

The recent discovery that Juicy Campus has merely become CollegeACB has spurred Mosier to put on his "Keep it Classy" wristband once more.

Mosier said the issue here is not just Juicy Campus or CollegeACB, but rather the whole concept of anonymous negative posts and blogs.

"People will continue to post, but it's our hope that we can at least lessen the traffic and inform the student body about the negative effects anonymous posting has on individuals," he said.

As long as students continue to post on sites like Juicy Campus and CollegeACB, students will continue to follow Ivester's final words before he signed off: "Keep it juicy."

Contact Winston Yu at (408) 554-4546 or wyu1@scu.edu.