Tennessee State University Bans Access to Internet Gossip Site

The Web site JuicyCampus.com enables university students to post uncensored and anonymous comments on just about any topic. In order to post a comment, the entry must be sent from an e-mail account registered at the particular institution. Many of the posts are sexist, homophobic, or racist. A large number of posts on the site name women who are deemed sexually promiscuous or provide details on the length of a male’s sex organ. When JBHE visited the JuicyCampus.com site recently we found hundreds of posts that contained the word “nigger.”

JuicyCampus.com has become the twenty-first century equivalent of graffiti on the inside walls of a bathroom stall.

Now Tennessee State University, the historically black educational institution in Nashville, has become the first publicly operated university to ban access to the JuicyCampus.com Web site for students on its campuswide computer network. The ban came about after a parent of a Tennessee State student complained that a post of the site called for students to beat up her daughter.

Hampton University, a private historically black educational institution, had previously banned access to the site from its computer network.

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