College blogs offer anonymity; crudity results

"It used to be an instrument of procrastination for me, but after like a day or two I stopped going on it 'cause it was so ridiculously hateful and immature. I was shocked that words like that would come out of the mouths of Dartmouth students." Such was an '09's opinion on Bored At Dartmouth (formerly Bored At Baker). The site is at best a gossip board and a breeding ground for meaningless profanities that most people view as stupid, offensive, or both. The fifteen seconds of fame and precipitous decline of the site, was due, no doubt, to the majority of students becoming sick of the "hateful and immature" nature of the posts. There are two aspects of BoredatDartmouth: first, it provides a safe place where Dartmouth students can reveal certain vulnerabilities; at the same time, it harbors vicious and cruel remarks and provides a safe place for those remarks to reside, a place where those who say such things must take no responsibility for their actions. Dartmouth students who make personal attacks or post unnecessarily hostile comments have abused their power of speech under the cover of anonymity.

Anonymous message boards do provide a good outlet for expressing anonymous thoughts or questions that could be uncomfortable to ask for privacy concerns. There are posts by individuals who are stressed or depressed or both, and all the "agree"s that their comments receive must be a relief on a campus in which everyone says they are "stressed" but rarely discusses the substantial negative impacts that stress has on students' personal lives.

Sincere questions about sex can be asked under anonymity as well. For example, a female student, in one post, wrote that she is "dying to lose her virginity" but wants to lose it to a guy that she "at least likes as a friend" and asked whether there are others who have the same problem at Dartmouth. This individual obviously has no intent of profanity. She is asking a question that would be impossible for her to ask the public without some type of judgment that will likely result in her personal humiliation. Sex is a part of human life, but it is a difficult topic to discuss openly due to its profoundly personal nature. Even the following post, though explicit, does not have to be demeaned as mere profanity:

anonymous | 11/22/07 08:46:07 pm girls will you not give an uncut guy head?

While we consider ourselves sexually experienced and knowledgeable, there is still a lot that we do not know and BoredatDartmouth allows us to ask these questions, if not for the sake of knowing them for purely practical reasons.

In many cases, topics such as psychological health and sex require anonymity. Responsible practices of anonymity include satisfying one's curiosities on useful sexual topics or calling out to an otherwise silent population that faces serious issues.

The problem with the site is that some abuse the protective mechanism in order to target and attack specific individuals. In this sense, anonymous sites promote the abrogation of responsibility. Freedom of speech exists to protect people from censorship, not to deny the accountability of an individual when he or she makes a comment. If you tell a girl that she is a whore to her face, she might get upset, cry or perhaps slap you. An anonymous posting calling the girl a whore would deprive her of the opportunity to show any of these possible responses towards the party responsible--she is in effect blocked from opportunities to which she is entitled. Furthermore, this protective shield of anonymity can also embolden people to humiliate the accused in a public arena to a more severe degree than in the case of a face-to-face confrontation. This tendency is reminiscent of online bullying, through which mainly pre-teens and early teens, bolstered by the faceless computer screen, are able to direct horrible comments towards their peers. In fact, BoredatDartmouth and anonymity allows us to re-enact high school.

It is tragic as it is that many Dartmouth students have failed to practice anonymity in a responsible manner. The true tragedy, however, is that, despite the want of intellectual or serious discussions most schools' "Bored-At" sites, BoredAtDartmouth is largely unique in having posts that are personal attacks towards specific students, often in the form of acrimonious and sexually explicit insults. Why is Dartmouth different?

Looking at the "BoredAt" sites of other schools, there is much similarity to Dartmouth's site among many of the topics. Most schools' sites consist mainly of postings on the Presidential election, the campus sex scene, funny links, random observations, sexual solicitations, and campus organizations and/or sports teams--just as Dartmouth's. However, BoredAtDartmouth seems to be the only site that contains the names of individual students on a regular basis--and in doing so, the postings are generally unflattering if not demeaning.

Dartmouth students, it seems, are less capable of engaging in responsible anonymous undertakings online than students at other schools with "BoredAt" sites.

This viciousness on the part of Dartmouth students has several possible explanations. However, the most significant explanation may be that the overall structure of Dartmouth is not conducive to mature and responsible behavior. The Greek System is the biggest contributor to this trend. Greek Houses are essentially cliques that hinder social interactions with people who are unlike members of one's house. By joining a house, members can enjoy a bubble within the notorious Hanover Bubble, further isolating themselves from real world interactions with a truly diverse population. The Greek System also fosters a collective culture of binge drinking and general debauchery. The college, having chosen to engage with the Greek System rather than fight it, does not encourage anonymous online students to behave as responsible adults. Given the campus climate, it is not surprising that students using BoredAtDartmouth fail to comprehend the responsibility and maturity that anonymity demands and instead use the site to perpetuate high school culture. In this way, BoredAtDartmouth becomes the bathroom stall, filled with vicious rumors and illicit sexual accusations.