<p>I recently learned about a facebook page called <em>Brandeis Hookups,</em> ostensibly created to share interesting, funny or unusual sexual escapades anonymously. I was appalled by some of the things posted there. Some of them very hurtful, and I think, though no names are named, some of the students referred to probably do recognize themselves in the descriptions and are probably hurting. I am staying off the page, because I am a Brandeis parent, and my daughter and her friends are doing a fine job of calling out some of the most hurtful, insensitive posts. But, as usual, I wonder what the CC community thinks of this type of thing.</p>
<p>I think it’s the type of thing I’d advise my kid to stay off of. If it’s truly anonymous, then by boycotting it, you can’t be hurt by it.</p>
<p>I just went through this with my son’s high school. Apparently this is a growing problem for many schools and Facebook. In our case it involved pages named “<school name=”"> Confessions". Some anonymous person sets up the page anonymously (which is apparently against Facebooks own rules) and allows anyone to post anonymously which leads to a lot of the disgusting comments. You can report the page and get others to report the page and Facebook takes it down when it gets a number of complaints. The student government at my son’s school set up their own page to counter the offending page… got it on the TV news and the page was taken down that same day.</school></p>
<p>My son’s college has a “X University Confessions” page on Facebook. I’ve looked at it several times and for the most part it is in good fun, although a few of the confessions can be in poor taste. Sometimes a student even posts a problem and gets supportive feedback and advice. I think if these kinds of pages are moderated they can be a good creative outlet. Another trend seems to be “X University Crushes” which can be cute but occasionally a tad creepy. I have also seen “Overheard at X University.” I think the key is having some control over totally inapporpriate content that may be posted while not squelching the fun part of it.</p>