Cal Poly is too classy for Juicy Campus

By the time you finish reading this editorial, another one of your fellow students or two will have been slandered on the Internet’s newest college-aimed Web site, their names trashed for any of their peers to see.

The words may be true, they may be not – it really doesn’t matter because the people who post are completely anonymous and unaffected.

Our online fascination with each other’s lives seemed to have started a few years ago when ‘social networking’ hit the vernacular. MySpace mania and Facebook frenzy unfolded, and we could only wonder what these new virtual connections could possibly mean for face-to-face communication. Even so, we all went along with it, eventually realizing that there are benefits to these sites if they’re used in moderation. In between throwing sheep and poking strangers, Facebook does have legitimate networking usefulness – as any reporter struggling to find a source can tell you – and it is kind of fun to find a long-lost classmate from elementary school.

Then, the dynamic changes. Along comes a whole other animal: JuicyCampus.com.

Juicy Campus is an online forum where students can post their thoughts about anything, anonymously and without login required. The perfect gossip site, in other words. It’s so juicy that it even has a pop-up window when you first go on that verifies that you’re 18 or over (can you think of any other kinds of sites that do this?).

As the Mustang Daily reported last week, JuicyCampus.com recently added Cal Poly to its list of about 500 universities and colleges, meaning we can gossip about our fellow Cal Poly students that much easier.

But why?

It’s unclear how site creator Matt Ivestor goes about making his selection on which universities gain “juicy” status, but apparently Cal Poly is a hit. Already there are over 2,000 gossip threads just about our school.

The top two most viewed threads: “Hottest girls at Cal Poly” and “Who are the biggest man-whores on campus?”

Wow, Cal Poly. So gossip has outgrown the halls of high schools and manifested itself on the Internet? Rather than write in the bathroom stalls and whisper behind lockers, you can post anything you want from the convenience of your own home and with no personal consequence, right?

Cal Poly is one of the best public universities in the nation and the pride of the entire CSU system. And yet, rather than use their time here to broaden their minds, some students would rather spend time trashing it. Rather than meeting a professor for coffee, talking with friends about politics, learning a new language or taking an art history class, some people may waste their days posting and digesting slanderous trash about their peers.

Come on, people – grow up. Is this really what we want to represent us at the defining moments of our life?

Ivester said that the site poses no threat to people’s reputations because its content can’t be picked up by search engines, but that’s beside the point. Obviously, anybody can go on, post about and search for anything. People’s names are on there, and it can affect them, as the two students the Mustang Daily interviewed can testify.

Your parents can go online and see this if they want to. So can your future employer, your graduate school advisor and your fiancé.

And more than hurting just individual reputations, it presents an altogether ugly side of Cal Poly to the world. Imagine the high school senior deciding where she should go to college. Curious, she logs on to Juicy Campus and searches for Cal Poly and suddenly her first impression of our college is of our sexual habits. Nevermind, she thinks, she wants to go to a college where people actually learn.

We received several e-mails last week (some ironically anonymous themselves) criticizing us for writing the article at all. Before writing the article we had thought long and hard about the possible consequences, ultimately deciding to write what we we thought accurately portrayed both sides of Juicy Campus: not just its increasing popularity, but also its hurtful consequences.

Some said our coverage would only drive up hits and encourage more people to post gossip on the site. Maybe, but we had faith in the average Cal Poly student to be above it.

Afterall, when history looks back on the early 21st century, what would you have it see? Will we be an age defined by innovative thought, or hateful little rumors smeared on the Internet?

Will we be remembered as the generation that defined the new millennium, or a dismal populace who lived and died with no particular consequence save for a few moments of online satisfaction?

We’re better than this, Cal Poly. Prove Matt Iverstor wrong – we’re a classy campus, not a ‘juicy’ campus.