Why are Northwestern students so catty?

Colleges & Universities Northwestern University
1

<p>I’m a freshman at NU and out of boredom I went to collegeacb.com to look at NU’s page. I was surprised to see 27 pages of threads just for NU. Most other top tier schools had only 3-4 pages of threads. What the hell is it about Northwestern students that makes them feel the need to gossip so much and say such nasty things? I haven’t noticed anything like this here–I guess people only do behind each others’ backs.</p>

<p>Here’s the link by the way: [Northwestern</a> - ACB](<a href=“collegeacb.com”>collegeacb.com)</p>

2

<p>Definitely reflects poorly on the University. Let’s hope only a small # of people are making all those posts.</p>

3

<ol>
<li><p>this is a new site; it just happens that some of the NU students discovered it earlier and it takes only a small group of bad apples to expand and spread. I am also not convinced that most of those posts aren’t by the same persons. People that have an ax to grind can easily pretend to be someone else while they are really just literally talking to themselves or among the same few people. </p></li>
<li><p>anyone can be a member with a “.edu” account and any member can post on any school’s page. Not every post there is necessarily posted by NU students. In fact, in this early stage, since many other schools are rather quiet because no one there knows about it <em>yet</em>, people from other schools have reason to congregate on NU page, jacking up the number further. </p></li>
</ol>

<p>It’s not like NU admission purposely selects catty people and schools don’t have the power to change personality traits.</p>

4

<p>Because Northwestern is based on Greek systems.</p>

5

<p>Is it just me or do those posts make the school more appealing?</p>

6

<p>It’s just you.</p>

7

<p>Read past the first page or so. Most of the posts are spam and ■■■■■■■■; fit enough for these sorts of sites.</p>

8

<p>So you don’t think this goes on at the majority of colleges? This is just one school out of hundreds that happened to pounce on something new.</p>

9

<p>Most people loathe the very existence of that site and its ilk. The small self proclaimed “elite” that soapbox from it are the dregs of NU.</p>

10

<p>Huh. I’ve never been on that site before. Never went on Juicy Campus either. But at any rate, it doesn’t really matter to me. It’s not like anything they say really matters anyway.</p>

11

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<p>Obviously only a small number of Northwestern students are posting, with probable cross-talk with other posters. In comparison, Wesleyan, a much smaller (and also academically minded) school, already has 660 pages! I don’t think pages on this site has a correlation with anything.</p>

<p>[Wesleyan</a> University - ACB](<a href=“collegeacb.com”>collegeacb.com)</p>

12

<p>First, this website may be the most ridiculous thing I have ever read. The fact that people completely lose their inhibitions when posting anonymously is a bit shocking/disappointing…</p>

<p>Second, after browsing a couple of the threads, there are a lot of accusations that a small group of people is responsible for posting about themselves and people they know. </p>

<p>IMO, the jury is still out as to whether NU students are ‘catty.’ I am not tremendously worried considering that you could find a small group of genuinely mean or obnoxious people at any campus in the country…</p>

13

<p>check out other schools’ websites now. most are pretty active and just as catty, if not worse.</p>

14

<p>It’s cold and miserable. </p>

<p>Gossip spreads regardless of air temperature though :)</p>

15

<p>a small disclaimer from the campus of Wesleyan… a member of Wesleyan’s class of 2012 owns collegeacb.com, which is why Wes has such a large # of pages… one of our rising sophomores actually owns the entire site:)</p>

<p>[Freshman</a> Develops CollegeACB Empire ? The Wesleyan Argus](<a href=“http://wesleyanargus.com/2009/02/17/freshman-develops-collegeacb-empire/]Freshman”>The Wesleyan Argus | Freshman Develops CollegeACB Empire)</p>

<p>in other words, as a previous poster mentioned, I argue that the # of pages != level of cattiness</p>

16

<p>wow, Wes students are kinky lmao. had no idea this website started in Wesleyan and JHU. it’s pretty cool that dude is managing 500+ websites. i wonder how much profit he makes.</p>

17

<p>^^</p>

<p>Though, as far as I know, the entire concept started with Oberlin; they still have their own site. The really interesting thing is, if you go back to early WesACBs on livejournal, they are being used for actual confessions and such. It has been on a slow decline as it becomes more of a campus fixture and ■■■■■■ get attracted to it. </p>

<p>The ACB is a mixed bag. I am proud of the fact that we (Wes) still manage not to have very many “biggest sluts on campus” type posts (and normally when some tries to start one, people just respond with jokes - “Michael Roth,” our school president, is a standard response to this kind of thing). But some people still do get slandered, which sucks. OTOH, some good things do come out of the ACB. It’s very useful around class selection time (to find out info about profs), and more than once I’ve spent a night during exam week switching between studying and commiserating with and asking questions of people in my class - people I probably only knew by face and never would have gotten to talk to that way. And during the shooting last semester it was a pretty amazing source of news and support - it was encouraging that the ■■■■■■ and the catty threads all but disappeared during that time.</p>

18

<p>^Do they still have naked parties at Wesleyan? :)</p>

19

<p>Wesleyan should just do professor information the right way, ala Northwestern CTECs.</p>