Gossip Web site unethical
By Nicole Harris
You walk into a party and, as everyone stares, realize that your latest escapades are not so secret.
While life may be awkward for a few days, before long everyone has moved on and there is no record except for a faint memory of your embarrassing party moment.
JuicyCampus.com, an online gossip Web site for college students, is changing this. Technology is continuously being pushed to the limits, and now it's also ruining students' lives.
The Web site, which was created by Duke University alumnus Matt Ivester, is a forum in which college students can post anything and everything about their classmates, professors and school. Posts are uncensored and, according to the Web site, "Always anonymousâ?¦ always juicy."
Posts on JuicyCampus range from who's having sex to votes for the "sluttiest" people on campus, to which professors are having affairs with students. This is not to mention the less raunchy, yet hurtful accusations like people with the worse body odor or the ugliest person. At some schools, even racist remarks have been posted.
JuicyCampus currently supports web sites for over 60 schools, and the numbers are rapidly growing. While Santa Clara isn't on the web site yet, our last minutes of anonymity may be approaching.
At such a small campus, a gossip forum could be extremely powerful and painful for all involved; even the most miniscule indiscretion would not go unnoticed.
Reading the posts are undoubtedly entertaining. Yet as you read the latest post on who has an STD, it's difficult to push aside the fact that you're reading information -- with first and last names attached -- that applies to real people with real feelings.
Imagine walking to class, talking with friends at the library or at a party, all the while wondering if what you do or say, real or not, will end up on the Internet for all to read. It's like "Big Brother" is watching, except now we have turned into the enemy of ourselves.
Sure, we all make mistakes and do things that, if we thought long and hard, we probably wouldn't want our grandmother to know. But part of being in college is making these mistakes and learning from them. Not only does JuicyCampus attack the most intimate details of people's lives, but it invades the daily privacy that we all take for granted. Advanced technology makes tracing of user IP addresses impossible, blocking students from ever knowing who their enemy is.
It's great that we have the ability via the Internet to know what's happening across the world as it happens. But do we need to be so cruel and immature as to use this medium to make people feel violated and, in some cases, unsafe? Last time I checked, we all graduated from middle school years ago.
Nicole Harris is the opinion editor for The Santa Clara.