It was her first year at Elon, and she thought he’d be one of her first college friends. She never imagined that she’d be the victim of acquaintance rape.

“I still get chills down my spine whenever I think about it,” senior Jill Medhus said.
Medhus has spoken at Take Back the Night and almost every other sexual assault awareness event, but now she is taking on something much bigger. Last week, Medhus revoked her anonymity from the Sexual Assault Restorative Justice project, her senior project for the Isabella Cannon Leadership program.

SARJ was inspired by PostSecret, the widely popular Web site and book series that allows anyone to anonymously tell a secret through postcard art. Through SARJ, anyone affected by sexual assault — a victim or otherwise — can express his or her secret anonymously as a step in the healing process.

Medhus originally decided to conceal her identity as the founder of the project.
“It was to honor the voices of those who had been silenced,” Medhus said. “It shouldn’t matter who I am. I wanted it to be a community effort.”

 Medhus feared seeing her name on the project would make people hesitate to share their secrets and that she might receive hate mail. But she soon realized that she could better spread the word herself.

Although much of the Elon community is aware of Medhus’s experience with sexual assault, she has yet to tell some members of her family.

“I’m nervous. I hadn’t told them before because I was afraid they would pull me out of Elon, but now that I’m about to graduate, I don’t have that fear anymore,” she said.

Medhus has been passing out 300 blank postcards, on which participants can express themselves. Those who write a return address on the back of the postcard will receive information about the resources available to them.

Postcards can be mailed to Leigh-Anne Royster, coordinator for personal health programs and community well-being.

Every postcard will go into an anonymous file that will eventually comprise the final product, a book of secrets. Until then, each postcard will be posted on the SARJ Web site, which will be updated over time, similar to the PostSecret Web site.

“I was never a regular follower of PostSecret until I started this project,” Medhus said. “But now I look at it all the time.”

Medhus hopes her project will help change community attitudes toward sexual assault.
“It’s one step in making sexual assault unacceptable at Elon,” she said. “It happens everywhere, and I want to enable restorative justice for everyone, even if they choose not to prosecute.”

March 11, 2009

by Rachel Cieri

Today’s economy may not be an ideal time to open a new business, but two local entrepreneurs have high hopes for their projects in Elon’s new Timberland Station.

Located directly across from the College Station apartments on West Haggard Avenue, this strip of shops had its first business open in December.

C&R Ski-Outdoor provides local access to sporting goods

C&R Ski-Outdoor is owned by Dick Forrest, who has been in the business for 25 years, and he is opening the store as an extension of its first location in Hillsborough.

Elon may be closer to the beach than the mountains, but Forrest saw a potential market here. The Hillsborough store served a customer base out of Raleigh, and the Elon location aims to tap into the growing market in Greensboro and Winston-Salem.

“We’ve had good luck with the local people, but not as many students have been coming in,” Forrest said of the Elon store.

Peter Ustach, an Elon senior and day manager at the store, said they plan to provide services and products specially catered to students.

Along with accepting Phoenix Cash, the store will be offering package trips to Snowshoe and Wintergreen, two popular ski resorts in the area. For a flat price, students will get rental equipment, a lift pass, dinner and breakfast as well as a bus ride to and from the resort.

The store carries more than just ski apparel. During the warmer months, it will offer summer clothing, and it will carry licensed Elon apparel and provide screen printing services all year.

As a small business, C&R aims to bring exceptional customer service.
“It’s different than the big sporting goods stores. We’ll actually give you the time of day,” Ustach said. “You can even make an appointment, and Dick (Forrest) will sit down and talk with you.”

Forrest is open to any student suggestions for how the store can improve, and there is even discussion of building a rock wall in the future.

Fat Frogg to offer students another bar choice

There may already be three bars in the town of Elon, but the Fat Frogg aims to provide a different option when it opens later this spring.
The 1,500-square-foot bar and grill owned by Elon alumnus Jeff Mackenzie will offer a “nostalgic,” smoke-free atmosphere catered especially to university students in the Timberline Station shopping center.
“Some people say that students are only here nine months a year and that you have to do what other people want, too. But I somewhat disagree,” Mackenzie said.

He plans to put in a stage with built-in sound equipment for bands, a dance floor, a patio and old-style games like shuffleboard. He is also envisioning a wall of old Elon memorabilia.

“We want to create a wall to tie the past and present together. I want it to be a place where students and alumni can come,” Mackenzie said.
He also understands the problems of underage students who must pay a higher cover charge to be admitted to a bar, so he’s hoping to provide another option.

“They might have to pay a higher cover, but we’re thinking about giving them ‘Frogg dollars’ to buy food and non-alcoholic drinks once they’re inside,” he said.

Another idea Mackenzie is toying with is the possibility of a shuttle to bring students back and forth to the bar at night.

As for the unusual name for his business, Mackenzie said he wanted it to be memorable.

“We pushed around a lot of names, but we wanted a name we could market a bit and have fun with,” Mackenzie said. “It’s all about Elon, and it’s all about what the students want.”

Theater Review

March 11, 2009

by Rachel Cieri

People may have seen “Cinderella,” but they’ve never seen it like this.

Needing no words to tell the story, the Russian National Ballet Theatre transcended language barriers March 5 with its dancing in this classic fairy tale.

Far from the vanilla Disney version most Americans are familiar with, the magic of the production lay in the graceful motion of the dancers’ bodies rather than McCrary Theatre’s special effects. In fact, only a few puffs of fog, light changes and three backdrops colored the character of the production.

With music playing from a recording and costumes that were more functional than elaborate, dancers’ interpretations carried the production.

Some of the first characters the audience sees certainly set the tone for the remainder of the show. Cinderella’s evil stepmother clambers out in a gaudy gown, oversized loafers and a wig, looking like a makeup palette has exploded in her face, because this “matron” is played by a man.

The ugly stepsisters, both women, entered in equally hideous get-ups. Each exuded her own personality, one mean and one childish. It wasn’t just the sisters’ costumes that made them ugly. Holding their limbs at awkward angles instead of the beautiful extensions traditional to ballet, the dancers were fully committed to their characters.

In stark contrast, audiences were graced with the presence of Marianna Chemalina as Cinderella, who embodied the elegance and innocence of a classic Cinderella. Her dancing was near perfection, with every detail choreographed down to her fingertips.

The male dancers in this production were exceptional across the board. From the “dance master,” who leaped higher than seems humanly possible, to the prince, who was as graceful as he was charming.

At this point, the performance became less about the storyline and more about the full frills of a traditional ballet.

Upon the arrival of the fairy godmother, an entourage of ballerinas entered behind her, representative of fairies. Four of the fairies represented the seasons, but this interpretation may have been lost on audience members not frantically checking their programs.

After a long number by the fairies, a male dancer in a floppy brown costume makes his only appearance in the show as a personification of time. Had he stopped leaping and turning long enough to let the audience see the clock emblazoned on his chest, it might have made more sense.

The classic parts of the story seemed to pass quickly in this ballet. Cinderella being dressed for the ball, her appearance there, her flight from the ball and the fitting of the slipper each seemed minimal in comparison to the time devoted to side plots like the fairies and performances by “ambassadors” and their wives after the ball. The jester, however unneccessary he was to the story, ended up being quite entertaining with his acrobatic antics.

The exotic costumes and foreign styles of dancing were entertaining for a few minutes, but these numbers seemed to eat up the time that could have been devoted to the pumpkin stagecoach ride and Cinderella’s conflict with her stepfamily.

In the end, the magic of the dancing made up for these shortcomings, leaving audiences with a long-awaited happily ever after.

March 3, 2009

by Rachel Cieri

In the tiny Middle Eastern country of Tajikistan, single mother Madina Mamadjonova struggled to provide for her 5-year-old daughter by selling traditional dresses she made herself. With her husband unable to find work, she became the sole supporter of her family and had little time to be with her daughter. Now, all that has changed because of an Elon alumna in Charlottesville, Va.

Until Kelli Palmer sat down with communications professor Ocek Eke, she had never heard of Kiva, the micro-lending organization that introduced her to Mamadjonova. Eke and his global experience class had been raising funds to make a small loan to one of the thousands of entrepreneurs in developing countries that Kiva supports.

The world’s first person-to-person micro-lending site, Kiva.org, works to connect U.S. citizens to individuals and groups around the world by facilitating no-interest loans. The organization’s partners and field agents travel through some of the most remote regions of the world to find local business owners who lack the credit history to secure traditional loans.

“The cool thing about Kiva is that you can see the profiles of the people you’re lending to and see their progress,” Palmer said.

Kiva volunteers record the entrepreurners’ stories, post their information and photos online and allow lenders to browse through their “profiles” to select the person to whom they lend.

Each entrepreneur asks for a certain dollar amount for a specific purpose — one might need to buy a donkey to transport his goods, another could need equipment to mass-produce his product or, in Mamadjonova’s case, the collateral would help buy garments from other clothing-makers for resale. Each loan is repaid over a period of six to 12 months
The loans are typically small, but lenders need not provide the entire loan.

Instead, they can lend in $25 increments so that several users might contribute to the same loan. The process of lending is as simple as buying a product online — Kiva lets lenders contribute through PayPal or a credit card and when the loan is repaid the money can either be put toward another loan, donated to the Kiva organization itself or withdrawn for the lender’s personal use.

“When they told me about it, I immediately pulled money out of my purse and said ‘This is my contribution,’” Palmer said of her conversation with Eke and his students.

Because she was the child of a single mother, she feels a special connection to the struggling single mothers around the world and has supported women from several continents. She is currently lending to eight entrepreneurs, each in a different country.

“Some people give 10 percent of income to church. I give 10 percent of my income to helping people,” she said.

Kiva allows lenders to connect with one another by forming groups, and Elon University’s group currently has 15 members who have contributed a total of 82 loans to people in almost 20 countries.

Sophomore Catherine Reynolds is not a member of this group, but jumped on the opportunity to get involved after being invited to a Facebook group in support of the organization.

“I’d never heard of it before, but it seemed like a really good way to help get people on their feet,” she said.

Reynolds has made two loans, using the same $25 she contributed for the first loan to pay for the second.

“We’re college students, so there’s not a lot of money to go around,” Reynolds said. “But $25 can go a long way.”

Right now, Madina Mamadjonova has repaid about $500 of her $1,000 loan, the equivalent of 3,400 somoni, Tajikistan’s national currency. As Palmer finds out through progress reports, Mamadjonova has been able to expand her business and increase her profit, allowing her to spend more time with her daughter.

Palmer loves seeing her borrowers prosper.
“It’s great to have that sense of interconnectedness,” Palmer said.

CANCELSAVE

February 11, 2009

by Rachel Cieri

Indian students welcome the Elon class outside the Traveling Science Center in Kerala, India.

This year’s inauguration was a global events, as many Elon students abroad found out this January.

Watched and waited for from around the world, President Barack Obama’s transition to office made headlines on every continent, and in Kerala, India, 24 Elon students did too.

Professors Crista Arangala and Martin Kamela had set out to India with the simple goal of bringing Indian school children new methods of learning science, but the Traveling Science Center brought this Winter Term class much more attention than they expected.

Three newspapers, including India’s national paper The Hindu, picked up the news of the traveling students.

The Traveling Science Center made headlines in The Indian Express.

“A few days after the Obama inauguration, an event widely reported in India, it made a good read for the locals to hear from the American students about their impressions,” Kamela said.

“Perhaps because of this Obama-spurred interest, the stories made it to page two and page three of major newspapers, whereas in other times, the coverage might not be as prominent.”

Kamela’s assessment seems correct. The coverage in the two English papers, The Hindu and The Indian Express, focused on how the students were missing out on the historic inauguration to be in India.

The students reported that the Indian press didn’t seem interested in much else, and some were even ignored when they said that they did not vote for Obama.

“As for being interviewed, the reporter just kept trying to get us to say really controversial things,” sophomore Elizabeth Leman said. “We all shared our favorite things about India so far, and he was like, ‘But how do you really feel?’ [Since we were] Americans, maybe he just wanted us to be more scandalous.”

Their work might not have been scandalous, but these students were attempting a project that had been years in the making.

Arangala and Kamela had originally wanted to start their Traveling Science Center in Sri Lanka, arranging the program as part of a winter term class in January 2008.

Elon students appeared in an article in The Hindu.

But their plans were put on hold as the island nation slipped into a state of civil unrest.

“[Kamela] and I agreed to move the program in Kerala since Kerala has similar characteristics to Sri Lanka regarding education and life expectancy, and Kerala has lots of interesting development issues,” Arangala said.

Kerala, a union state on India’s southwest coast, has some of the highest literacy rates in the country at 89.9 percent, but the populace remains less educated than other developing countries in the region.

The Traveling Science Center operated by Elon students sought to spread inquiry-based education to India’s school system through a series of exhibits designed to pique a child’s curiosity.

Rather than reading textbooks, students were encouraged to learn about science by participating in activities and asking questions.

One popular exhibit taught students about light spectra by giving them cards with diffraction grating. This breaks down visible light into its colored components.

Another exhibit taught inertia in relation to mass by having students guide differently weighted balls through an obstacle course with brooms.

Contributing reporting by Hunter Gros.

February 11, 2009

by Rachel Cieri

Karma. It’s how some are describing the demise of one of the most controversial websites to hit cyberspace.

Online gossip phenomenon JuicyCampus.com was shut down Thursday after a year and a half of spreading college rumors, reportedly due to a lack of funding from advertisers.

“In these historically difficult economic times, online ad revenue has plummeted and venture capital funding has dissolved. JuicyCampus’ exponential growth outpaced our ability to muster the resources needed to survive this economic downturn, and as a result, we are closing down…” CEO Matt Ivester said in a letter to the Web site’s users Wednesday.

The more than two million posts that JuicyCampus.com has supported will no longer be available to the public, but regular users need not worry. Their IP addresses are still safely under the watch of Lime Blue, Inc., JuicyCampus.com’s parent company, and they will not be released unless summoned by a “lawful supeona.”

Despite claims that the shutdown is due to the nature of this site’s sometimes unsavory content, company representatives maintain that legal issues played no role in the financial troubles.

“JuicyCampus’s services and policies have always been well within the law,” reads a “Frequently Asked Questions” post on the site’s official blog.

JuicyCampus also refutes rumors that its advertisers pulled their funding from the site and attributes its monetary losses to the state of the economy.

Online ad sales have been dipping across the board, and, according to BusinessWeek.com, this follows the trend set in 2008, with ad sales at their lowest since 2001. Even Super Bowl commercials took a hit this year, with companies like E-Trade airing one ad instead of its usual two.

JuicyCampus maintains that it is not shutting down from being banned at too many campuses, either.

“Any revenue lost as a result of the campuses that banned us was negligible,” company representatives said in the FAQ.

Multiple smaller, private colleges and universities have banned the site, but Tennessee State University remains the only public university to have it blocked from its servers.

As of Thursday, the former gossip Web site has become a GoDaddy.com web domain for sale.

Although, Ivester said that he has no plans to put the site back online anytime in the immediate future, he remains optimistic.

“While there are parts of JuicyCampus that none of us will miss – the mean-spirited posts and personal attacks – it has also been a place for the fun, lighthearted gossip of college life. I hope that is how it is remembered,” Ivester said.

Whether or not that will be the case has yet to be seen.

Feb 17, 2009

by Rachel Cieri

With more than 3 million Americans newly jobless, some students are now facing the prospect of losing health care coverage.

Director of Health Services Kitty Parrish said she does not have a “magic solution,” but the health center might be able to relieve some of the financial strain.

What some students might not know is that visiting the health center instead of a standard medical practice could actually save them quite a bit of money. The Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce estimates the average doctor visit in the Southeast costs more than $80, but all visits to the R.N. Ellington Health and Counseling Center are free to students.

Medications do carry a charge, but through the health center it’s only a nominal fee, meaning students are only charged a small amount more than the health center paid for it. Patients can also request to be prescribed the least expensive medication possible, typically a generic version rather than a brand name.

“It’s something we do for all students. If the prescription is $4 at Walmart, we’ll let you know,” Parrish said.

But there are strings attached.

All Elon students are required to have some form of health insurance. For students whose parents have lost their jobs, there are a couple of options. Elon offers an “Injury and Sickness Plan” through BCS Insurance Company and students can apply for a public plan through their state of residence.

If a student loses his or her insurance and has not yet found a replacement policy, the student can put any charges on his or her student account to deflect the expenses temporarily. What the health center cannot offer, though, is a pool of money to pay for patient expenses.

Students could also check to see if they qualify for care at Open Door Clinic, Alamance County’s free clinic in Burlington. To qualify for coverage, patients must be both employed, uninsured and North Carolina residents. The clinic is open Tuesdays and Thursdays with limited hours, making it more of a last resort than a place to be treated regularly.

“I don’t have a magic answer because I don’t think there is one right now,” Parrish said. “But we’ll never turn you away.”

If Elon and Burlington residents could have President Elect Barack Obama talk about one thing in his inaugural address, it would be the economy. With bailout mania overshadowing every other issue, citizens are eager to hear what their next president is going to do about it.

Elon University Political Science Professor Rudy Zarzar

“Everything becomes irrelevant if you don’t address the economy,” Professor of Political Science Rudy Zarzar said. “People will lose their jobs, and without a job, it’ll become a tradgedy for a lot of people.”

Zarzar is optimistic about the state of the economy with Obama in office, saying that the president elect has the knowledge and commitment to resolve the situation. Others are not so sure.

ARARMARK employee and Burlington resident Stephanie Thomas is skeptical about the entire bailout plan, and has just one question for Obama.

ARAMARK Employee Stephanie Thomas

“How in the world does he expect to pay for all this money he’s getting ready to hand out?” Thomas asked.

“It’s scary because all the other countries depend on the U.S. to bail them out, but we have to say ‘no.’ They need to take care of themselves,” she said.

Many simply want to hear more detail about the bailout plan, admitting that they don’t entirely understand how it is supposed to work.

Kernersville resident Kevin O'Brien

Kevin O’Brien, Kernersville resident and vice president of sales at SublimeOne, is in this situation. He admits that he doesn’t have all of the solutions, but he says that it’s important for him to understand the details.

Elon University junior Emily Speer wants Obama to explain how the U.S. got into its current situation. Despite being only 20 years old, she recalls that, a few years ago, congress was “gung-ho mortgage,” and she wants some explanation as to what made them change their minds.

She would also like Obama more of the specifics of the problem, like U.S. dependency on foreign products.

While most are eagerly awaiting the address, some feel that nothing Obama can say or do will make any difference.

Burlington resident Jeff Barbour

Burlington resident Jeff Barbour thinks that Obama, or any other politician for that matter, is incapable of digging the U.S. out of the financial mess it has gotten into.

“There are a lot of things I’d like to hear, but they aren’t going to be things he’ll talk about,” Barbour said of Obama’s upcoming inaugural speech. “It’s a feel good kind of thing. It’s almost a childlike state of mind.”

Barbour said that all politicians simply want to appease their voters rather than be honest and admit to the current crisis, and Obama will be no different. Printing money is not the answer.

“We can’t continue to print money, or the economy will collapse. They talk about the government sponsoring medical bills, but there is no money for it. All the politicians know it, but they don’t want to admit it,” he said.

“We live by the golden rule – those with the gold make the rules.” By this, Barbour means that polticians will do anything they can to stay in power, Obama included.

“There will be no real difference between Obama and Bush,” he said.

Based on a Dec. 6 radio address, Obama knows the importance of the economy to his constituents.

“Yesterday, we received another painful reminder of the serious economic challenge our country is facing when we learned that 533,000 jobs were lost in November alone, the single worst month of job loss in over three decades,” he said, beginning his address.

He announced that a few key parts of his plan dealt with energy efficiency, investing in the national infrastructure and upgrading school buildings.

Despite the overwhelming consensus of desire to hear Obama’s plan for the economy, that issue is not first on everyone’s minds.

Burlington resident Brenda Wilson

Burlington resident Brenda Wilson deals with the struggles of illegal immigrants every day in her job as the director of Christian education at Davis Street United Methodist Church, and she wants to know what Obama is going to do about it.

Realistically, Wilson knows that he probably won’t even bring up the subject in his speech, but she believes it is of the utmost importance for the government to devise a system that will help make illegal aliens citizens.

“Their children go through the school system and feel like they are Americans, but once they leave, they can’t do anything because they don’t have the documentation,” she said.

While the issue has been largely overshadowed, one of the first things on Zarzar’s mind is the fate of healthcare. He predicts that the number of Americans who are uninsured could rise to 40 million in no time at all.

With opinions ranging across the board, Obama’s inaugural address is one of the most anticipated events in the new year.

Dec. 3, 2008

By Rachel Cieri

 

The Seven Principles of Kwanza were created by Maulana Karenga.

As a way to share the history, values and culture of the African heritage holiday with the Elon community, the Multicultural Student Council and African/African-American Studies programs will co-host a Kwanzaa celebration from 3:35 to 5:15 p.m on Friday, Dec. 5 in the African-American Resource Room.

“MSC was looking to have a holiday celebration, when Prudence Layne, the director of the AAAS program, suggested that we co-sponsor a Kwanzaa celebration, simply because it is something that had not been previously seen at Elon,” said Cheavanese Diedrick, a student program coordinator for the Multicultural Student Council. “Kwanzaa is a holiday celebrated by many and deserves to be acknowledged in this community.”

Students can participate in a smaller version of Karamu, a traditional feast that includes five traditional parts: welcoming, remembering, reassessment and recommitment, rejoicing and a farewell statement calling for unity.

The welcoming portion of the event will consist of a short video about the history of Kwanzaa. The remembering portion will include poetry readings as well as a performance from Elon’s praise team.

The reassessment and recommitment aspect of the celebration will feature a speech from Leon Williams, the director of the Multicultural Center. The farewell portion will be the traditional Kwanzaa Libation Statement, which honors African ancestors and sets the tone for the future.

All are welcome to attend the event, from those who regularly celebrate the holiday to those who are unfamiliar with it but wish to learn more.

“It is important for individuals to have a better understanding of various cultures and practices, and Kwanzaa is a significant holiday which many people celebrate but many more people know very little about,” Diedrick said.

Diedrick pointed out that Kwanzaa celebrates values like unity, collective work and responsibility, all of which are qualities Elon values. The celebration will give students a chance to learn more about the holiday while enjoying refreshments and entertainment.

Dec. 1

By Rachel Cieri

“Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you?” The subjects of conversation on JuicyCampus might beg to differ.

When Duke alum Matt Ivester created JuicyCampus.com, he started a phenomenon. While it has only been in existence since August 2007, it sports more than 1.6 million posts to date on 500 campuses, enabling anonymous gossips from across the country to post any information they want.

Elon University is one of the newest campuses to “join” the site, meaning that an interface was created especially for the school’s students. Since September, when it first went online, students have posted more than 40 pages of gossip threads, but how much is the campus really participating?

Talk of the campus

In an anonymous survey of 100 Elon students, 95 said that they had visited the website before, and most said that they visited the site once or twice each week for updates. It is clear that this Web site has permeated the social consciousness of the campus.

The active participants here, though, are few. Only about 6 percent of those who have visited the site admit to posting a thread, and only about 24 percent admit to replying to a thread. This could mean that there are not many people who care to start these rumors and even fewer who take the time to respond.

Ninety-nine percent of respondents have been personally affected by what they saw on JuicyCampus, saying that they have seen a post about a group with whom they identify. These include a person’s ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, fraternity or sorority, sports team or campus organization. Eight percent of respondents have experienced every college student’s worst nightmare – their full names were posted on the site.

Spilled juice – worth crying over?

The JuicyCampus is a virtual rumor mill, but the people who are talked about are real.

Anyone who has visited Elon University’s page on JuicyCampus would recognize the name “Adam Lawson.” The freshman communications major became a frequent topic of conversation shortly after he arrived at Elon, and the online community has yet to tire of talking about him.

Lawson says that the jibes at him started when he signed his name at the bottom of a thread he posted. Soon after, he found that he was the subject of multiple posts calling him names. At first, Lawson thought that the posts would be compliments to him, but he found it to be the opposite.

“They called me a ‘creeper,’” he said. “I don’t creep on people.”

The harsh criticisms hit Lawson hard. He said that he sometimes went days without talking to people because he was so upset about the rumors. Because he is a freshman, JuicyCampus has become part of his identity to other students.

“I’ve been approached so many times by drunk people who say, ‘Aren’t you the kid from Juicy Campus?’ I’ll talk to them or I’ll walk away. I might change the subject if I feel like talking to them. One time a drunk dude wanted to fight me,” Lawson said.

His bitterness toward the site’s visitors is apparent.

“There are people who read it and believe it for the gospel. It makes me wonder how they got into this school. Clearly, their parents have done a poor job. If you’re going to post something about others, take a look at yourself,” he said.

As for the reason why people have reacted so negatively to him, Lawson chalks it up to jealousy. “If you’re going to take the time to put me down, there’s obviously something you’re envious of.”

Whether or not this is the case, Lawson’s name still appears regularly, drawing hundreds of views to each thread.

When junior Emily Silva saw what was written about her, she had a reaction that was a bit out of the ordinary.

“I laughed,” she said. “I actually laughed. I thought it was funny at first because it was so ridiculous.”

The journalism student had visited the site on many occasions before she learned that she was the subject of conversation. She quickly investigated JuicyCampus when she first heard about it in September while talking to friends. Her sorority had been mentioned, and she wanted to see what was being said.

“I was disgusted,” Silva said, explaining her first impression of JuicyCampus. “It’s such a cowardly mechanism for [gossip]. It’s just very juvenile. People are writing on it so they can’t be identified.”

The way she discovered the nasty remarks about her has become common practice among college students; she typed her own name into the site’s search bar. What she found was that she had been named in reply to one of the threads asking students to name the campus’s “biggest,” “best” or “most” something. The attack was to her personality.

“It’s not a ‘burst into tears, my life’s ruined’ kind of thing. There were definitely people defending me,” she said.

Even so, the contents of the thread have resonated with her.

“It made me think about how I’m talking to people. It was almost beneficial in a way. It made me evaluate how I portray myself to people,” Silva said.

In her everyday conversations, Silva now wonders if the person with whom she is talking is one of the people who wrote something about her. She now notices everything from a person’s body language to the way he or she speaks. Silva has suspicions about the identities of these individuals, but she can never be sure.

“I just want to know who these people are so I can stay away from them. They don’t need to be in my life if they’re that unhappy with me,” Silva said.

Still, as much as she dislikes JuicyCampus and the type of conversation it encourages, she concedes that there is some value in it.

“I think there is some truth about what everyone has said. Rumors have to start from some tiny bit of reality.

Junior Craig Filazzola would agree. As a student discussed in a similar way to Silva, he can understand why he was the target of some unflattering conversation.

“I’ll talk to anyone, and I’ll approach anyone. It’s who I am. I’m not scared to talk to people. This could be taken as awkward, but no one’s perfect either. I’m not going to stop based on the opinions of a few people,” Filazzola said.

Unlike Silva, Filazzola had never visited JuicyCampus.com before he found out that he was a topic of conversation. He’d never even heard of the site until Dean of Student Life Smith Jackson e-mailed students a statement about the university’s position on the site. He says that gossip simply doesn’t interest him.

Filazzola said that he has not been very affected by the comments made about him. He does not see the people who wrote the comments as being of much value to him.

“I probably forgot these people. They mean nothing to me. If you gave me the three names [of the posters], I probably wouldn’t remember them,” he said.

Filazzola does not have much respect for people who would take these comments seriously, either.

“I’ve found false comments and some friends, and it’s like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I’m sure there are a few people I don’t like, but I’m not going to go on JuicyCampus and waste my time writing about them,” he said.

Cleaning up the spill

<!–[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]–>In a letter to JuicyCampus users on the site’s official blog, CEO Matt Ivester asked posters to refrain from hateful dialogue on the site, saying that hate is not “juicy.” Whether or not some users took this to heart, libel still runs rampant.

For students who have been defamed, there are few options to pursue to right their reputations.

Legal Options

JuicyCampus’s terms of use, which were clearly crafted by some clever lawyers, state that “JuicyCampus is immune from liability from content posted by users.” As Dr. George Padgett explained, JuicyCampus is classified as a service provider rather than a publisher. Because service providers do not edit the content before it is published, courts have maintained that they cannot be held responsible for defamation.

In 1998, Kenneth Zeran attempted to sue AOL for failure to remove a defamatory post on an online “bulletin board,” but he was unsuccessful. Sound familiar?

A landmark court case on this issue, Zeran v. America Online influenced this law in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which states that “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

According to Padgett, this may not always hold true, but it would take extensive time and effort to overturn the law.

“Courts may look at precedent, but that doesn’t mean they’ll follow it,” he said.

Flag burning laws, for instance, have been reversed multiple times in the Supreme Court, and an area as new as Internet law is certainly subject to change.

Students who believe they have been defamed will probably have more success suing the author of the post or posts. JuicyCampus has been cooperative with subpoenaed IP addresses that can trace the computer from which the post was published. If the post is ruled defamatory, meaning that it is a false accusation of a fact, if there is sufficient evidence to prove that an individual is responsible for it and if the post is ruled damaging, then the author can be successfully sued.

The downside is that this process can get expensive, and there is no guarantee that the individual will be able to pay the damages.

“You could spend a lot of money suing someone with no money,” Padgett said.

Furthermore, there is always a libel-proof defense: a defendant may be able to prove that the plaintiff already had a bad reputation that could not be damaged any more.

Do-it-yourself dealing

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Sometimes, it may be best to leave the situation alone and let people forget. Kiersten Schmidt, a junior at the University of Miami, became familiar with JuicyCampus last spring, and since then, she said, her interested has simply fizzled out. She checked the site daily for the first few weeks after she learned about it, but the initial shock wore off quickly.

“It was new and exciting, and I wanted to read all the gossip,” Schmidt said. “But it got old really fast once people stopped talking about interesting stuff and started posting things like ‘OMG BILLY SMITH IS GAYYYY!!!!’ It was just dumb, and I got over it.”

With this sort of attitude becoming widespread, it is likely that many will simply forget about any particular piece of gossip. Those who become topics of interest can take heart in knowing that the site is search-engine resistant, meaning that incriminating threads are not likely to appear in a Google search. JuicyCampus has its own search bar to allow users to access the topics they most want to hear about.

Even so, AnneMarie Meyer, a senior at Oklahoma State University, did not sit by the wayside when she found out someone had written less-than-flattering statements about her.

“I did post threads because I was on the first page and wanted to get my name off it,” Meyer said.

The main page of the website holds about 20 threads per campus, and the user must click links to other pages to see older posts. Knowing this, Meyer posted threads until her name had been pushed back to another page.

A student who is not satisfied to merely divert attention away from him or herself, however, can attempt to rid the site of information entirely through services such as ReputationDefender.com, which offers to help eradicate incriminating information for fees starting at $14.95 per month.

A matter of free speech? <!–[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]–>

It is no secret that JuicyCampus has taken some harsh criticism for allowing an almost unlimited number of controversial statements and rumors to exist in cyberspace, and the site has always defended itself by claiming that it defends first amendment freedoms.

Reading the fine print on the site, however, might tell a different story. It states in its “Frequently Asked Questions” section that it reserves the right to remove content at any time for any reason, but can this still be called free speech? Will the law with which JuicyCampus shields itself ultimately be its downfall, or will precedent prevail?

The answers lie with its users.