It features headlines that read “ATO = Gay?”, “Dating an Emory Girl VS. Sticking Your Head in a Toilet” and even “The Jews Ruin This School.”
Its supporters call it harmless. Its detractors, many of whom have been the subject of defamatory posts, call it slanderous.
It’s JuicyCampus.com, and it’s the latest — and most controversial — online craze to hit campuses, including Emory’s.
The site’s premise is simple: Bring middle school-level gossip to the Internet. Juicy Campus is unregulated and anonymous. The site, created by Duke alum Matt Ivester, includes a disclaimer that serves as its guiding principle: “Facts can be untrue. Opinions can be stupid, or ignorant, or mean-spirited, but they can’t be untrue. And we believe everyone is entitled to their opinion.”
So, apparently, do a sizable chunk of Emory students. In the past few weeks, Emory students have made more than 100 posts. The posts average 200 and 1,500 page views; the most popular one has about 20 comments.
The posts would seem immature on a middle school bathroom wall. Most posts explore variations of the same themes: “Which girl/guy is the most promiscuous?”, “Which sorority is the best/worst?” and “I saw so and so at Maggie’s!”
In one particularly vile but representative post, a commentator writes, “Emory has a lot of potential. But lets be honest -- the Long Island Jewish Princesses ruin this school (Great Neck, Dix Hills, etc.) First, the girls are disgusting but enjoy around thinking they are attractive. Jappy Girls always have a snobby look on their face like they just stepped in dog s--t. ...
"Bottom line — Emory needs to have interviews and kick out the gelheads and fat girls. The Jews ruin the culture of the school. We also need a real campus feel and need to stop letting all the Oxford retards in.”
These posts are embarrassing to Emory, but relatively harmless. But, the site ventures into malice when its commentators mention students’ names, which they do with alarming frequency.
Juicy Campus exists at the intersection of free speech and defamation. Does it violate the law? Probably not.
Stuart Benjamin, a law professor at Duke University, recently told the Duke student newspaper: “The hurdles for libel are very high. Libel doesn’t include parody, and if the statement is not demonstrably false, you’re going nowhere.”
That doesn’t mean that Emory administrators, or students who oppose the website, are helpless. There are two steps to take:
First, College Council and the Student Government Association should consider passing resolutions condemning the website and anyone who posts on it.
Is a resolution a futile gesture? Maybe. Would it draw unnecessary attention to the website? Undeniably. But it would raise awareness of the prejudice spewed on the site, and would possibly spur the University to action. There’s precedent for such an action: Last month, Pepperdine University’s student government passed a resolution condemning the website and urging the administration to ban it from the campus network.
Anyone on campus can submit a resolution, including SGA and College Council legislators. Both SGA President Emily Allen and College Council president Danny Berger expressed concern for the comments on the site, but said they were not sure Juicy Campus should be banned on campus networks. “I can’t speak on behalf of the College Council legislature, but personally I’m concerned with the precedent that banning any website sets,” Berger wrote in an e-mail to the Wheel. “Certainly this website would be a prime candidate if we were going that route. But what comes next?”
Second, the University should consider banning the website from the campus network. This is not an easy step to take. In fact, it would be an unprecedented one. “It has been Emory’s longstanding practice not to ban websites on the campus network,” wrote Brett Coryell, Deputy CIO for University Technology Systems.
“My division, as part of the larger Emory Community, places a high value on academic freedom and therefore does not see it as our role to censor which sites people might visit, no matter how objectionable some might consider the content.”
Likewise, a hallmark of President James W. Wagner’s administration has been a commitment to free speech. This is why speakers as diverse as David Horowitz and Hanan Ashrawi are welcome on campus.
But Emory is also a private institution that doesn’t have to adhere to the First Amendment. The University wouldn’t allow “ATO = Gay?” or “The Jews Ruin This School” to be scrawled on a dorm message board, and it shouldn’t allow it to be posted on a website viewed through the campus network.
The rumor mill at Emory may have found its online home. But this home shouldn’t be implicitly sanctioned by the University.
Steven Stein is a College senior from Los Angeles. He is editor in chief of the Emory Political Review.
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