juicy gossip

It was the most brilliant of light bulbs that spurred the creators of Campusfood.com to say “Hey, college students love to eat, and love when food shows up at their door.” It also goes without saying that there is a difference between the era B.F. (before Facebook) and now, when you can figure out if you and your friend-with-benefits are “in a relationship” or if “it’s complicated” with the help of a virtual middleman. Ratemyprofessor.com may have given you the priceless gift of a semester staring at an Adonis/Venus de Milo of a lecturer, after you saw him/her deemed hot with a chili pepper. There are simply some ubiquitous websites nowadays that have really left an indelible mark on what it means to be a college student.

Here’s hoping that Juicy Campus does not become one of them.

Meant to conjure up images of a real life Gossip Girl running around Ithaca with the most enticing and sexiest tidbits about our own Blair Waldorfs and Serena Van Der Woodsens, Juicy Campus has even in its infancy harmed the members of the Cornell community beyond any entertainment it will ever provide. More than a few Cornellians have had their names completely sullied without any benefit of knowing who denigrated them on this virtual slambook, and without any opportunity to speak out on behalf of themselves. Never is there a requirement to substantiate any serious claims; never is there any oversight by administrators.

Despite the fact that slanderous accusations pervade the site, the privacy policy of Juicy Campus is only meant to protect those who post, and those about whom posts are written have no special rights. Bored@, which began at Columbia and then spread to similar schools (including Cornell) and was meant to entertain those studying at the library, had a similar anonymous message-board layout, but specific names of students could not be used. If they were, the website administrators were supposed to promptly delete the posts to protect those who would potentially take offense. And there is much on Juicy Campus that is beyond offensive.

Indeed it is true that by writing about Juicy Campus, we are giving them a certain amount of publicity, however negative it is. Still, every time someone looks at the website, there is a rather substantial chance he could find himself being ripped apart by people he can never confront. Beyond that, Juicy Campus really doesn’t give Cornell students any credit, thinking that our schadenfreude — our “pleasure taken from someone else’s misfortune”— will override our sense of what is simply abhorrent and mean-spirited. Something needs to change about their policy because though Cornell students enjoy the weekly installments of Serena and Blair’s misadventures, we’d rather not live in the plastic world of the movie Mean Girls. And really, why do we even care?