Meanwhile, at the Washingtonian

In its February issue, the Washingtonian has an article that chronicles the party scenes of five area colleges. It can be trite (the writers have either long since graduated or are trying hard to indicate that they’re so over college) but I can’t say I knew much about the George Mason party scene before I read it.

However, the article incorrectly states that a fifth of all calls to GERMS are alcohol related. In reality, it’s only 7 percent. Give us a little credit!

Charms and out-of-touch touches in the article:

• Necessary explanations of the curious drinking games we play: “He uses a beer bong for ['pregaming,' or warming up with drinks at home]; the funnel attached to a tube is great for drinking fast.”

• The weird decision to view Howard University scene through the lens of a student who is identified outright as not your typical Howard student in a feature that implies it’s looking at the typical party scene at each college: the hyper-alcoholic Tiffany, who’s had a fake since she was 12, and friends, one of whom can chug a pitcher of margharitas in two minutes.

• Delightfully transparent references to Towne: “You could walk in with a piece of cardboard that says ‘I am 21 years old,’ and they will give you alcohol”  and probably Rhino: “So she heads to a bar that’s popular with freshmen because it’s so easy to get into.”

• Those crazy kids at UMD: “I blacked out a little bit, but I remember playing around with a fire extinguisher in the hallway.”

The GWU section also awkwardly transitions into a three-paragraph detour to discuss our old friend Juicy Campus:

Kids worry more about a new Web site called Juicy Campus. It has pages for schools across the country where students can post gossip. “C’mon. Give us the juice,” it says. “Posts are totally, 100% anonymous.” Topics are often things like who the biggest slut on campus is or which guys are secretly gay. Or they’ll target one person, using first and last names and asking others to weigh in.

On the GW page, someone wrote that a certain guy “is a loser. He hit on his straight friend. Twice. What a FAGGOT.” On the Georgetown page, one girl is labeled “the dirtiest slut around.” Someone else wrote about her: “definitely a huge whore. probably has STD’s, so stay away!”

Some student governments are considering blocking Juicy Campus, and students have started flooding the site with poems, off-topic questions, and messages about how Juicy Campus is cruel.

Hey, it’s all college culture, right?

Photo taken from Flickr user ThisIsIt2 under a Creative Commons license.

No, but seriously, I’m broke!

Georgetown’s own Blair Waldorfs are out of luck: according to a press release, online gossip site Juicy Campus is closing tomorrow. This isn’t that surprising, considering that the site’s founder, Matt Ivester (above), admitted in a speech at Georgetown that the site wasn’t making a profit. From the press release:

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 the site as of Feb. 5, 2009.

Juicy Campus has been a spam wasteland for a while now, but it did help out some secret censors when it launched. Both GUSA President Pat Dowd and the Hoya said they were interested in blocking the site at Georgetown. And who could ever forget Steve Holt’s tireless work?

Photo by Helen Burton

Untold riches

In honor of last week’s cover story about DC poetry slams, we’re having a limerick contest. Write a limerick about Georgetown and send it in by the last day of classes, December 5th. Surely you can do better than me:

Leo’s was supposed to have new creations
with Aramark laying new foundations
But with only the new Diner
And other changes just as minor
Who’s surprised by seven health violations?

The prize? A box of JuicyCampus merchandise that has been sitting in my room all semester. There are some genuinely good things in it:

• 10 Koozies
• 4 weird kits full of pain pills and handwipes. Is it a sort of pre-Walk of Shame kit? I think so.
• 2 shot glasses
• 8 rolls of chapstick
• 5 bottle openers
• And 9 condoms, none of which you should trust.

Leave your entry in a comment by the end of December 5th and you could be rolling in branded promotional materials. I will also accept George the Third’s real identity and evidence proving it.

You can keep your Kofi Annans and your Rupert Murdochs. For me, the best mark of a speaker at Georgetown is that he or she has no patience with stupid questions. The Ethicist was pretty good at dissing rambling questioners two years ago, but Matt Ivester, the founder of Juicy Campus, didn’t just raise that bar–he called it a make-out slut the next day.

Lecture Fund brought Ivester to campus because of the furor Georgetown Juicy Campus caused when it launched earlier this semester. It doesn’t hurt that, judging by the number of times his people have asked Vox Populi to interview him, he probably comes cheap.

Ivester came off as reasonable in his speech. He’s got the law on his side, and, as he pointed out, it’s not like anyone hassles Google for libel posted on Blogger. He generally stuck to the same points that he used with the Independent and the GW Patriot. The only real “news” in his talk was that Juicy Campus won’t expand to high schools and that he doesn’t know how long posts will stay up.

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We checked in with VP of Student Affairs Todd Olson to see if there was any truth to claim by American University Dean of Students Sara Waldron that we’re “taking some action” against Juicy Campus. His response? Umm, no.

I just don’t know where that understanding came from. We are not pursuing any action against Juicy Campus.

Sorry AU, looks like you have to figure out a policy on your own.

Yesterday, the American University Eagle reported that Georgetown officials had nefarious plans for Juicy Campus. We thought that was funny considering that GUSA President Pat Dowd, once enamored with the idea, had dismissed it weeks ago.

In an email, Pat Dowd denied that our beloved Juicy Campus is threatened:

It is unfortunate that certain media outlets tend to speculate on these sort of things without first checking the facts, but let me assure you that There was never, nor is there now, a decision made between GUSA and the University to ban the site.

That doesn’t rule out an administration move separate from GUSA, but we’ll take it.

Sara Waldron, the AU official who’s the basis of the Eagle’s story, wrote in an email that she has not talked to anyone in Georgetown but rather heard Georgetown was doing something from an AU colleague.

The most pernicious website of our time, Georgetown Juicy Campus, recently expanded to include our neighbors at George Washington and American. Now the AU Eagle is reporting that the AU administration’s official response is to wait to see what we’re doing.

[Associate Dean of Students Sara] Waldron said Georgetown will be “taking some action” and AU is waiting to see what action this is.

“We’ve contacted them to see what they’re doing with the site,” she said. “We’re going to wait and see what Georgetown does.”

Huh? Last time we checked up on Juicy Campus, GUSA President Pat Dowd told us he didn’t think the administration was going to ban it, but maybe things have changed? Perhaps the Hoya and President Pat will get their way after all…

The above ad for collegelifeDC that’s running on the Hoya’s website. Props to them for tailoring their message to the market, but they get some demerits for so shamelessly piggy-backing off Juicy Campus’s notoriety. Another problem: the ad is kind of deceptive, implying that collegelifeDC is simply a classier alternative to Juicy Campus. Not so.

Sorry, but reading restaurant reviews is nowhere near as scintillating (or, one might argue, as useful) as discovering which members of the BFrat are rapists or what the best place to copulate on campus is. Plus, I can’t really trust a site that gives Leo’s four stars.

You’re sick of Juicy Campus, I’m sick of Juicy Campus, and it only just got here. Bear with me, though, because there’s a mewling baby censor in today’s Hoya who’s begging for a response.

Writer Greg Mottla (COL ’10) is mad about Juicy Campus, and why not– there aren’t even really any secrets up yet, and it’s already filthy. Greg is especially concerned about his internet reputation:

If I am applying for a competitive internship at JP Morgan and my interviewer types in my name into the Juicy search bar and it shows a site that says I had sex with 15 girls in Chadwick’s bathroom and am a cocaine addict, it seems likely that it will adversely affect my chances for obtaining the internship.

Any boss who takes an anonymous gossip post seriously is going to be hell to work for, but Greg makes a good point. How can Georgetown help?

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I lamented Monday that Georgetown doesn’t have a pitbull in the anonymous gossip dog fight that is Juicy Campus because we don’t have a section of the site for ourselves, even though Juicy Campus added more colleges.

Disregard that. Apparently, there is a Georgetown section–it’s just that no one posts in it. Someone kicked things off with a charming question. If you follow that link, check out the four widemouth basses and their friend a grouper on the ad on the left side of the page.