Writing juicy gossip about classmates on bathroom walls is officially outdated. The new outlet for insults and scandals? The Internet, of course.
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Boston University’s ‘one and only source into the scandalous lives’ of its students has not quite reached ‘Gossip Girl’ status; the website is, however, similar to the TV series in essence.
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Anonymous Confession Board, otherwise know as CollegeACB.com, allows students from colleges across the country to post comments about students, fraternities and sororities, relationships and sex.
ACB originated as the replacement of gossip website Juicy Campus in Feb. 2009. Juicy Campus had sites for more than 500 college campuses in the US with an estimated million visitors per month.
According to Quantcast.com, a website that measures website traffic, ACB has had approximately 70,000 unique visitors to its site in the past week alone.
Each university featured on the site has its own webpage, including BU. Recent posts on the BU page include comments about fraternity parties, sorority recruitment and various sexual topics.
BU’s ACB page also features a ‘Crush List,’ which claims to help people locate other students looking for romance. A member can place up to 5 people on his or her anonymous Crush List. When a person on his/her list also puts the member on his/her own Crush List, both members are then notified of the crush.
ACB was originally created by Johns Hopkins University graduate Andrew Mann and Wesleyan University graduate Aaron Larner, but is currently owned and run by Wesleyan sophomore Peter Frank, according to an ACB press release.
Unlike its predecessor, ACB encourages active discussion of various college-related topics rather than posting derogatory comments aimed at students. Students are also able to report any offensive posts to the webmaster for deletion, an ACB press release said.
‘We never called for salacious gossip and that’s never been our mission,’ Frank said in an interview with Time magazine. ‘We’re really trying to just give a student space where they can dictate discussion. In a perfect world, students would use the site for really constructive purposes.’
BU students have mixed feelings about the site. College of Arts and Sciences freshman Suzann Duan said she thinks ACB has the right intentions despite the prevalence of gossip on the site.
‘In a sense, it provides a good forum for communication for college students,’ Duan said. ‘It’s interesting, to say the least.’
However, Duan said she feels that some students abuse the freedom of speech the site provides. She said she thinks ACB’s webmaster is justified in deleting certain inappropriate comments.
‘I feel like [the webmaster] has a certain right to get involved,’ she said. ‘There’s a line you really shouldn’t cross.’
College of General Studies freshman Jillian Ceballos said she feels ACB is hurting college communities rather than helping them.
‘To create a whole site for [gossip] is not something that I think should happen,’ Ceballos said. ‘It’s focusing on a lot of negative energy.’
Ceballos said she feels that writing students’ full names on the site is particularly hurtful.
‘I think the whole thing is inappropriate,’ she said. ‘They can write what they want without adding the name.’
CAS freshman Reena Clements said she feels ACB is a terrible concept.
‘This is not even college talk. It’s 90 percent stupidity,’ Clements said. ‘It should be monitored if it’s a college website.’
Duan said she thinks students find ACB and similar sites, such as fmylife.com and BU Texts From Last Night, entertaining.
‘These kinds of sites are really popular,’ she said. ‘If enough people know about it, I think it definitely will last.’
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