 Media Credit: Juicycampus.com JuicyCampus.com's LMU page as of Sunday, Dec. 2, 2007 at 9:24 p.m.
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"LMU... does it really have sports? I've seen a couple of black guys running down the court, does that count?" This is just one example of a post on JuicyCampus.com, all of which are anonymous.
Two days after this comment was posted on the new gossip Web site, Juicy Campus, it received 236 views. Equally popular posts include ones gossiping about specific people's personal lives and ones criticizing LMU faculty and staff. The Loyola Marymount University Administration is now working to counteract the effects this site has had on campus.
Juicy Campus' mission, according to its Web site, is to "enable online, anonymous, free speech on college campuses." Seven college campuses, including LMU, are currently supported by Juicy Campus. The Web site was officially launched on Oct. 24, 2007.
The site is in the Beta stage, meaning it's new and experimental, explained Matt Ivester, the creator of Juicy Campus. "We're improving the site's technology and expanding to more and more campuses," he said.
Ivester's creation has grown extremely popular on some campuses but has remained relatively unnoticed on others. As of press time, the LMU section has 23 pages of posts, while the UCLA section only has four (each page has 15 posts on it, and each post can have as many replies as possible). This is in light of the fact that LMU has a student population near 5,000 while UCLA has around 40,000 students. The most viewed post on the LMU page had 2,390 views as of Dec. 2, 2007.
The Web site is designed to allow students to write about any topic, institution or person, all anonymously. The site guarantees "there is no way for someone using the site to find out who you are. And we at Juicy Campus are not keeping track of who you are or what you post. In fact, we prefer not to know who you are. We like to think that famous people like Justin Timberlake and Beyonce are using our site. We love them…"
The numbers speak for themselves: many students at LMU have participated in the Juicy Campus forum. "It's a guilty pleasure," said Amanda Neufeld, a sophomore engineering major. "I don't write on it, but it's funny to read the posts. That is, until they're about people you know and then you realize that these are real people being talked about. I am disgusted by the racist and hateful speech displayed on that site."
