A few examples of the juicier posts on juicycampus.com include bicker hosing surprises, biggest tool, loosest vagina, smallest dick and the real reasons people took years off. Pretty funny to us, but pretty humiliating for the subjects of interest.
The University should ban this website. JuicyCampus stoops below the debauchery and superficiality of even IvyGate. I won't deny it: The moment I heard about it I perused the site for a good half hour. I found most of the posts hilarious, even the ones about my friends. While it tickled my brain for that half hour, afterward rationality kicked in, and I realized that some of this stuff could ruin people.
We all enjoy what we see on the site, but we also know that it is not in everyone's best interest. On principle alone, creating a site that promotes the labeling, criticism, defamation and humiliation of other members of our community is plain wrong. While people gossip among themselves regularly, creating a facility that streamlines this process is ridiculous. An open, anonymous, networked forum increases gossip exchange greatly, increases the number of people who participate and increases the number of people that get the shaft. The site also cannot qualify as a novel method of communication, especially since the communicators are totally anonymous and unknown to each other.
Many students were afraid of invasion of privacy with the greater communication and information exchange of facebook.com, but those fears have generally subsided with upgraded privacy features. It is unlikely that the same will happen for JuicyCampus, where the intent to post gossip on another person is implicitly encouraged in the FAQs. The privacy policy even suggests that posters can install IP address-cloaking software if they really care about their anonymity on the site.
The University has a responsibility to maintain and protect the well being of the student body at Princeton and a website that encourages gossip damages this well being. Keep in mind also that this site is open to the public as well. Is banning this website a curb on free speech? I don't think so. Free speech already has its limits; the First Amendment does not protect speech and expression that is obscene and libelous. Also, the purpose of free speech is to enable the democratic process, and I doubt JuicyCampus and similar facilities ever crossed the minds of the founding fathers.
Ultimately, this is not so much a legal issue as much as it is a social and moral issue: Such a move would go to show that we are a community that does not support a facility for gossip. Limiting access to websites is not new - it's been rumored that the University curbs the amount of bandwidth to youtube.com to preserve bandwidth for administrative functions. The University of New Mexico banned Facebook in 2005 until it gave in to student protests the next semester. But would people here really organize a protest to have their access to JuicyCampus? I hope not.
There is no way to prevent people from accessing the site and no way for the website itself to shut down. Disallowing people from accessing the site on the Princeton network could be a way for Princeton to join or even lead the way with other universities who are also being pressed to ban the site.
Ben Chen is a mechanical and aerospace engineering major from Los Altos, Calif. He can be reached at bc@princeton.edu.
NO
Don't lie. When you heard about juicycampus.com, your first reaction may have been disgust, but your second one was hitting the website, typing in your name to make sure you weren't on it and then looking through the threads. And if you haven't heard of it before, well, you're probably checking it out right now. So get off your moral high horse.
There's no denying that a lot of the posts on JuicyCampus are degrading, despicable, potentially libelous - pick your pejorative adjective. It's also entertaining, but only until you're the subject. "Sticks and stones can break your bones but words can never harm you" hasn't held water since, well, forever, so an anonymous forum like this where people can spill your deepest secrets, or worse, just create them out of thin air has the potential to do serious psychological damage and ruin people's lives. College ought to be a place where students feel safe to try new things and make mistakes. We shouldn't have to be constantly looking over our shoulder for fear that we'll be made a laughingstock on the internet. Creating a forum solely for the purpose of humiliating people like that is pretty crass. But would students protest if the administration banned JuicyCampus' URL from the Princeton network? You bet your ass we would.
The unfortunate reality of the internet age is that we now live in a fishbowl. Anything we do, say, imply, hint at or don't say at all can be posted online for the pleasure of viewers everywhere. We can't escape by monitoring our behavior because whether we actually did anything is irrelevant. It's not just JuicyCampus. Say you go out to the Street one night and don't realize that someone has a camera, and then those embarrassing pictures wind up on facebook.com; it's not much different. To call JuicyCampus the devil is naive. Though the University ought to maintain a safe environment for its students, it also has a duty to prepare us for the real world, and playing big brother to protect us from the evils of technology isn't the way to do that. If it bans JuicyCampus, people will just go find another website on which to post this stuff, plain and simple. Clearly, banning it isn't a viable solution.
Not only that, but blocking the website is a violation of our right to free speech and expression. Yes, free speech has limits, but it's a meaningless decree if it only protects the speech we want to hear. Speech that makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside doesn't need to be protected because no one would bother to censor it; it's critical and controversial speech that needs protection. The gossip on JuicyCampus is certainly unsavory and sometimes mean, but just because we don't like it doesn't mean that people don't have the right to post it. If you really don't want to see it, then just stay off the site.
Nonetheless, the Princeton student body ought to stop and think about what we're doing. Princeton isn't just a backdrop for us to live out our teens and start our 20s; it's a community. And we as a community have to decide whether we want to spend our time here helping each other and learning from one another, or if we want to destroy each other. The University ought to trust us to make our own decisions regarding this website, not play big brother and ban it. We as a student body need to weigh the entertainment factor and indulgence of our inner yenta against the possibility of destroying this safe community.
Alexis Levinson is a sophomore from Los Angeles, Calif. She can be reached at arlevins@princeton.edu.
Related editorial: "Turn lemons into lemonade"
Read More
Why can’t lecturers win the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching?
Jerry ZhuLet’s acknowledge those who make “boutique teaching” possible, those who work tirelessly to make our rigorous curricula more accessible, and those who dedicate their time to advising and guiding us through all the challenges we face at this University. Lecturers should be eligible for the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.
Let’s acknowledge those who make “boutique teaching” possible, those who work tirelessly to make our rigorous curricula more accessible, and those who dedicate their time to advising and guiding us through all the challenges we face at this University. Lecturers should be eligible for the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.
Princeton’s administration of justice is Trumpian
Frances BroganThe disparity between the University’s approach to Giberson and its approach to pro-Palestinian protestors reflects a concerning trend of appeasing an increasingly emboldened right rather than resisting the threat it poses to academic freedom and the wellbeing of Princeton students.
Secular Opening Exercises? Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water
Frank StrasburgerThe secular makes no room for the spiritual. What Opening Exercises are meant to convey is the spirit of the institution so that it may be kept alive from generation to generation.
The secular makes no room for the spiritual. What Opening Exercises are meant to convey is the spirit of the institution so that it may be kept alive from generation to generation.
