May 25, 2008
Administration investigates Confessional website
We got a tip about a month ago on this story from a reader, but now that I have a moment to post something, it’s worth highlighting now.
Inside Higher Ed’s (IHE) Andy Guess filed a report on the Confessional websites that have been starting up at several campuses around the country. One of these sites, which are essentially open message boards to post anything that comes to one’s mind, is present on the Amherst campus.
Billed as a portal to “share thoughts, debate ideas and communicate … anonymously,” the Confessional sites have deteriorated into arenas for obscene, vitriolic, defamatory and libellous comments and gossip about topics such as the sexual proclivities and preferences of individual students, who are sometimes mentioned by name or described in such a thinly veiled way that their identities are clear to the reader. Although the site administrators apparently attempt to weed out such postings, it is clear that many are not caught.
The original Confessional site was the creation of an Oberlin student and after an uproar at that campus the participation was limited to those with an Oberlin e-mail or with access to a computer located on the campus. That step has proven to be a hollow remedy as the objectionable postings apparently continue.
Sadly, Amherst is not an outlier to this situation. Things got so bad on the Amherst version of the website that the Editorial Board at the Amherst Student used its regular space in a March issue to argue that the College’s administration should shut down the Amherst version of the website entirely.
IHE notes in its report that attorneys for the College are planning to contact the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office to discuss potential legal action.
This raises a number of questions that IHE’s reporting does not answer. First, the IHE article notes that the Oberlin Confessional was eventually restricted to students using campus computers or signing in with Oberlin e-mail addresses. If access to the Amherst version is limited in the same way it would seem to me that much of the key information about who is posting this material would be available to the College’s IT department.
Perhaps the College would like the Massachusetts AG to issue a subpoena to the administrators of the Amherst Confessional website to divulge which IP addresses or e-mail logins are posting what material, but unless I am missing something doesn’t the College already have access to pieces of this puzzle? Does the College need to engage law enforcement to conduct additional discovery, or is it utilizing the Massachusetts AG to relieve it from the alternative of monitoring communications of its own students?
To be clear, I am not being critical of such a strategy—I feel for longtime Dean of Students Ben Lieber, who ultimately has to deal with this—and most people can certainly appreciate the College taking care to ensure a proper approach to confront the issue, but I think it is fair to ask the College what information about usage of the site is already in its possession and control, via its own network usage data.
Students also need to realize that there is little First Amendment protection for such writings on the internet, and the College would be perfectly within its rights to suspend or expel the parties responsible for the defamatory writings. Future employers can also take action based on their view of the proceedings. Most will not write such behavior off as an innocent college prank.
For those of us who have been to law school in the last few years, the AutoAdmit.com lawsuit is a cautionary tale for those that like to participate on such websites. AutoAdmit.com (a.k.a. xoxohth.com) is a website directed at law students with similar problems as the Confessional sites, but a group of female law students allegedly aggrieved by several postings there took action and sued the administrators of the site (and are also seeking information regarding that site’s “anonymous” posters). While many legal scholars debated the merits of the lawsuit (the plaintiffs apparently have little recourse against the administrators who did not post the items in question), enough information about the lawsuit became public that one of the administrators, a University of Pennsylvania law student, had a prior job offer revoked by a large law firm after it learned of his association with the site. The argument that AutoAdmit provided a space for “free expression” clearly did not fly with that law firm’s managing partner.
Shutting down these sites (and others, like the Daily Jolt) is probably a futile response by the administration, since other websites would undoubtedly crop up to replace them. But I hope that Amherst students (and others using similar websites) will soon altogether disassociate themselves from engaging in such behavior. If any students get caught in association with the objectionable postings on the site, the national attention such online misbehavior is getting recently will mean those indiviudals will likely face a variety of serious repercussions with lasting effects.
Dave Nardolillo '98 | May 25, 2008 05:24 PM | Administration | Student Life
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