The 'juicy' effect

By Nicole Harris

In Hollywood, you know you've made it when you've checked into rehab.

Well, fellow Santa Clara students, we've made it in the perverse college world -- we're officially on Juicy Campus, the Web site where anybody can anonymously post information about anyone.

And hey, that's great. This whole understanding community and competence, conscience and compassion thing was getting pretty old anyway.

Why go to a school that strives to accept everyone when we can just go online and gossip about each other anonymously?

Oh, and that whole notion of problem solving face-to-face that we learned in kindergarten? That's so 1990s.

Instead, let's post something online for the entire world to see about a problem we have with someone. The best part is, we can do it anonymously.

This shows that courage and maturity are overrated at Santa Clara, right?

I transferred to Santa Clara from a large university in the Midwest, one of the first universities to become engulfed by Juicy Campus.

With an enrollment of 40,000 students, the guys could be jerks, the girls could be catty and there was always plenty of juice to grace the pages of the Web site.

Yet the chances of knowing the people who were discussed were slim to none.

Which makes me glad I transferred from the cold and unwelcoming university environment to Santa Clara's warm and cozy collegial atmosphere.

Now, I can log on to Juicy Campus and within a week's span view posts accusing a friend as being a slut, a classmate of having herpes, a professor of having an affair with a student. Then, I can see everyone's feedback on who is the fattest bitch on campus and Santa Clara's creepiest guys.

I'm not calling for a boycott of Juicy Campus.

Why think of what's best for people when we have our constitutional right to free speech to protect?

Forget ethical considerations, I have the right to know who made out with three people last weekend.

And let's not learn from history -- isn't that concept fading away anyway?

Let's ignore the death of a 13-year-old St. Louis girl who committed suicide after cruel and untrue messages were posted on her MySpace page.

Instead, let's act surprised when somebody that we're friends with or had a class with commits the same act.

"I can't believe it -- he seemed so happy. I never thought those stupid comments could actually hurt him."

I know what you're thinking -- the chances of someone at Santa Clara reacting like that are, well, slim. And you're probably right -- most likely, in your four years at this school, Juicy Campus will seem to have little to no effect on students.

So when you see that girl in your class who was mentioned as the fattest whore on campus three months from now and she's shrunk to the size of a stick, don't think you or Juicy Campus had anything to do with it.

And when one of your friends transfers because she says she just doesn't like Santa Clara anymore, it's probably not because of Juicy Campus either.

If we are the generation that is going to change the course of this country, I'm a little worried.

Nicole Harris is a senior communication major.