Brittany Branyon: ‘Juicy Campus’ makes college look tacky

Brittany Branyon
Columnist
Published: May 16, 2008

Recently during pre-class chitchat, my friend Lara mentioned the newest rubbish to hit the World Wide Web. The online university black book known as “Juicy Campus” is evidence that there are still major problems with race and gender relations, as well as other issues, among my generation.

I am not writing about this to promote it in any way. This site is the most distasteful and upsetting thing I have witnessed in a while. Nor do I encourage anyone to dissect this black book as so many of my peers do. Whoever started Juicy Campus obviously has too much time on his or her hands and a love of drama, but there are some lessons to be learned from the garbage.
If nothing else, a disturbing discovery like this proves that we all have a lot of work to do.

When Lara told me about some of the comments written on the site, I grimaced. The phrases she repeated to me sounded like something from the Jim Crow South. She told me there was a post asking people to name white females who had relationships with black males. This was hard to hear, as always, but I know how most people around these parts feel about such a silly issue. Lara went on to say that there was another post titled “Hottest Black Girls at Auburn,” and I noticed a recurring theme – race, gender and sex. Most kids my age would hop on to check out the gossip, but the first thing that occurred to me were the dynamics taking place. After all these years, after the struggle and the progress, we still have to talk about these things?
Later, when I was on the Web, I decided to peruse the site and see what it was all about. I figured it would be hard to read, but I honestly did not expect what I saw. Some of the most popular posts include gossip on who’s who of fraternities and sororities, but those are the milder ones. Let’s just say the “n” word and very derogatory terms and topics regarding females are popular titles.

This is textbook discrimination decades after the women’s and civil rights movements.

Titles alone speak volumes for the hate of the people behind them. I cannot list many of them because of the language used, but I will try to give you some kind of idea.
For example, we have one post begging white women not to have relations with black men and another saying “the world would be peaceful without white people,” which I admit made me chuckle. The most disturbing of all is “Hey, (n word) lovers, look at this” in which the author lists statistics of African Americans and violence, welfare and STDs. I couldn’t care less whether the facts are true or not. They probably aren’t. The fact alone that people are malicious enough to seriously believe that one race is destroying humankind is repulsive.
In the very place a national movement began, we are decades behind.

Titles regarding women are just as bad. Posts ask people to list women and their number of sexual partners, whether they had abortions or are pregnant and whether they have diseases.
People are also asked to name homosexuals and to list the fattest females on campus, in order. The whole time I am thinking, “Are we not at Auburn to learn?” Seriously, who has this much time on their hands?

Brittany Branyon is a junior at Auburn University and is co-chair for the Auburn Sustainability Action Program.