Saturday, April 10, 2010

Juicy Campus and College ACB Push Gossip Boundries

By Rachel Ardise
Meredith Parker had been teased before, but never to this extent. She was urgently called into her friends room her junior year of college to see her name on the computer screen glaring back at her. A thread named “Meredith Parker, the real Greek Life bitch,” had been started on Juicy Campus.
New gossip sites like Juicy Campus and College ACB are a forum where students can anonymously post messages. They are heating up discussion among college campuses about privacy and free speech.
Parker, now a senior, was a victim of the site’s maliciousness. She says that posts contained “degrading stuff about the dirty things that they wanted to do with me sexually. Others saying horrible stuff about how I am apparently a terrible person, a slut, and deserving of being beaten by my boyfriend.”
Juicy Campus has come under the microscope of Connecticut Atty. Gen. Richard Blumenthal. In a press release he stated that his office has contacted this website “to determine whether it adheres to its promised bar on abusive, libelous and defamatory postings. Our investigation reveals that such postings are prevalent and pervasive in flagrant violation of the site's promise to prohibit such activity. Allowing anonymous postings without effective anti-abuse mechanisms invites inflammatory and hateful comments.” By doing so, he hopes that he will compel owners to enforce their own rules.
In an article by the Daily Nexus, a student-run newspaper from the University of California, Santa Barbara, Juicy Campus owner Matt Ivester says that nowhere in the “terms and conditions” does it state that there is any content screening. In addition, he said he is protected by constitutional first amendment rights, federal law and court decisions which exempt such websites from content generated by a third party.
However, Juicy Campus shut down in February, 2009 Juicy. In its press release, company officials stated they closed for financial reasons. They then started to direct their traffic to another gossip site, College ACB.
College ACB has stated that if students found a post offensive, they could write in and it could possibly be taken down. Parker says she tried to get posts removed from Juicy Campus to no avail and College ACB gave her a difficult time until she threatened a lawsuit. She was able to get information directly targeting her taken down, but other comments about allegedly being “bitchy” or “slutty,” have been ignored.
Owner Peter Frank was asked to comment but did not respond.
Some college students have begun to organize efforts against these websites. UConn students in particular have started an advocacy group called UNITE that talks about the effects of sites like these and what we can do to stop them. Tennessee State University has blocked the site from its internet access server.
Gabrielle Greenlee was the UConn Panhellenic president the year these sites first started to become popular. She says that although UConn was not successful in blocking the sites completely, some members of the university did monitor them as best they could. Also, conversations were held with Greek Life and the UConn community as a whole about how hurtful such comments can be.
Website defenders say that these sites make for light-hearted gossip. University of Connecticut sophomore Sarah Gerber says she goes on the site from time to time just to see what people say. “I think it’s funny. No one should actually take that stuff seriously.”
Not everyone is amused. Parker says, “The fact that someone would sit on their computer and write nasty things about another person is just something that is sad. No one, no matter what they have done, deserves to be on that site.”

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