One of the things I love about colleges in general, and Duke in particular, is that the students are always ready to leap to the defense of civil liberties. Freedom, and especially the freedom of speech, is held sacrosanct, like a priceless jewel in a high tower, closely guarded by the gendarmes de la liberté.
That is, of course, unless people happen to disagree with what you're saying. I mean, freedom of speech is all well and good, but you're not allowed to be mean.
That is, at least, the position taken by some over a gossip-themed Web site called JuicyCampus.com that has been the topic of much conversation recently. The premise of the site is this: Anyone can post a comment anonymously, and anyone can respond anonymously. And we can't have that, now can we?
Critics of the Web site have railed against it, calling it an "abuse of free speech." They've labeled it a "marketplace of slander" and mourned its "deleterious effects." An image comes to mind of crusty English aristocrats bellowing "Shame, shame!" around the halls of Westminster.
And what these critics fail to realize is that freedoms don't work that way. Freedom cannot, in fact, be abused: that term applies to privileges. And when we start thinking of speech as a privilege that can be revoked rather than a right that is innate, we will find ourselves on the road to speech codes and other forms of thought-monitoring to which so many other colleges have already fallen prey.
The critics seem to see this weakness in their argument, and so they feel the need to add that the Web site is amoral as well as overly free. And that may well be, but I thought we were supposed to be against the imposition of our morals on others. Certainly when a Chronicle columnist recently gave his moral opinion on gay marriage, he was shouted down for doing just that. But apparently some moral ideas need to be strongly enforced, while others have no place in the public arena. There's a word for such situations that I cannot quite recall, but you can probably think of it.
Now, before I give the impression that I'm endorsing slander and hate and all manner of nasty things, I should explain exactly what I think about this Web site.
First, the site is fairly slow, and many of the posts have no responses. The more popular threads feature titles like "Duke's Best Legs." My own were somehow omitted from that list, an oversight I easily corrected. "The Most Overrated Person at Duke" is another favorite, and beyond that it rather devolves into ramblings on frats (mostly by frat members) and a few more vulgar topics.
In short, it's stupid. Middle-school stuff.
So why am I going to bat for this inane site while at the same time calling on myself the ire of the PC machine? Well, partly it's because of the whole freedom business I mentioned. But it's also because however stupid the site may be, it's equally stupid to get offended by it.
Some favorite philosophers of mine once said, "Who cries over spilled milk? If you cry over milk, what are you going to do when someone punches you in the throat and you can't breathe?" Well this Web site is like spilled milk that went sour a month ago, when you have two gallons of fresh milk with which to replace it. It is anonymous idiots slapping each other-or more often, themselves-on the back for saying a few dirty words and mindlessly repeating "Yeah, I went there" to nobody in particular.
So one of these hacks said something mean about you? So what? Shall I fetch for you the world's smallest violin, to play upon it the saddest song? Their opinions are quite obviously not worth considering, and if your image of yourself is so flimsy as to be altered by them, then those opinions are the least of your problems.
You and I are not, after all, children on a playground. We are proud young adults, studying at an elite institution and preparing to enter a world that couldn't care less about thin skin and bruised feelings. We're big enough to take a real hit, let alone these utterly dismissible spitballs, and keep going.
And one day when we all realize just how silly JuicyCampus.com is, we'll wonder why anybody ever even cared about it in the first place.
Oliver Sherouse is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Wednesday.
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