BRITTANY YEAROUT
Assistant News Editor
Pepperdine’s Student Government Association voted 23 in favor and five against to ban access to juicycampus.com from the university network Wednesday night. SGA President Andy Canales said he does not know exactly what day the Web site will be blocked.
The Web site was founded by Duke law graduate Matt Ivester on Aug. 1, 2007 with the mission of facilitating an online community where anonymous free speech could be heard on college campuses. Yet many students have said it has become the tech talk of juicy gossip, which is full of lies, racism, hatred and offensive messages. Juicy Campus would not speak to the Graphic.
“It is like spreading rumors, it is why you read tabloids and it is our own Pepperdine tabloids,” said senior Anna McLaurin. “You want to get in people’s business. I am not going to lie, I am nosey and I want to know what it says but I think it is still really sad.”
The SGA meeting lasted two hours, most of which concerned the resolution. Before voting the SGA members asked questions, had a formal debate and an open forum for anyone to state their opinion.
“I am very proud of SGA, how the debate turned out and the way the senate considered this issue,” Canales said. “I think there were very good arguments on both sides.”
Many board members came forward and talked about their personal experiences. SGA Vice President of Administration Austin Maness, who wrote the resolution, called the Web site slander and talked about the pain words can bring.
“When I was a kid I was overweight, I was mocked a lot and made fun of,” Maness said. “I developed an eating disorder for three years and was bulimic. And, furthermore, someone on this Web site thought it would be funny to joke about eating disorders and how they thought it was good for girls to develop anorexia so that they could look sexy. And to me it is just unbelievably inhumane.”
During the formal debate, senior Off-Campus Senator Danae Melirrytou told the others to vote on how they would feel if their names were written all over the site.
“All I can say is put yourself in their position and how you would feel if you saw your name and did not see truth but something disgusting about yourself,” Melirrytou said.
However, not everyone agreed with the final vote. Senior Off-Campus Senator Mike Masten told the voters to not jump to the extreme of banning the Web site but to choose to fight in a different way. He proposed campaigning against the site to promote awareness, and discuss it with people to tell of the true harm such messages can bring.
“I by no means support this Web site, but the reason I opposed the movement was because I guess you can call it a faith in our student body and that they do have the capability to take responsibility for this,” Masten said. “I felt like banning the Web site should be the last resort, if a resort at all, and censorship should never really be that first stop.”
According to Canales, many students came forward and expressed their concern about the Web site. Therefore, he made the decision to first respond by sending an e-mail to the entire student body.
Canales also said he was hesitant to send the e-mail because more people would learn of it, but he felt it needed to be said, especially for the students that are hurt by the messages that have been posted.
“Of all the things I have worked on in SGA this year, this is an issue that students definitely feel very passionate about,” Canales said. “This has the potential to be very destructive for the community. There are always comments about the potential of suicide because of things that are said, and people need to be very mindful about how their words can affect people.”
However, according to McLaurin, the student body-email just brought more offensive messages to the site.
“I know he had good intentions but I think it made it worse because, before he sent out that e-mail, I don’t think that many people were paying attention to the Web site,” McLaurin said. “After the e-mail, me and all my suitemates went to the Web site and started typing all our friends in. Do you know how many posts were made after that e-mail got sent? It is a lot more popular now.”
After the vote to ban juicycampus.com, SGA also decided to start a special ad hoc committee to follow up on the resolution. Masten has volunteered to be the chair of the committee, which will start today by painting the rock, putting up posters and writing messages on Facebook against slander.
There is also a possibility of SGA using next week’s Chapel to speak to the students.
“It is basically an ad campaign to let students know the harm that slander can do,” Masten said. “We are just going to bring about some Christian ethics that we as a university are supposed to stand for but we don’t. One thing we want to start is, ‘hate isn’t juicy.’”
01-24-2008
