Almost all college students are familiar with the website JuciyCampus.com. The site, which is live on hundreds of campuses across the United States, was created in 2007 to provide college students with an anonymous forum for discussing campus gossip and other “juicy” topics. Unsurprisingly, the site quickly became host to malicious attacks on students and scurrilous mischaracterizations of people’s character.
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Naturally, the students who were hurt by the site believed it to be nothing but a forum for baseless slander. In this regard, they have been very vocal in their criticism of JuicyCampus and have even spurred investigations from the Attorneys General of New Jersey and Connecticut. Despite this however, JuicyCampus has still been able to operate with relative immunity thanks to the Communications Decency Act of 1996 which says, basically, that any content posted on a website is not the responsibility of the site owner or webmaster.
Because of this, many colleges have considered blocking access to the site completely. The optimal word in that sentence, however, is considered. Facing issues of First Amendment rights and the freedom of speech, no college has officially moved to ban the site.
That is, of course, until now. Thanks to the actions of Tennesee State University Vice President of Student Affairs Michael Freeman, TSU has become the first public university in the country to ban JuicyCampus.
It will be interesting to see if any other colleges follow in TSU’s tracks. How will websites like JuicyCampus function in the future if they continue to get blocked, or if the laws change?
For more information on JuicyCampus, check out this article for ABC News featuring ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik.
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[...] Blog has covered Juicy Campus in the past, profiling the hurt and hate anonymous slander engenders. [...]
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