Tabitha Diaz was sitting on her bed talking to a friend earlier this month when a sorority sister texted her: "Hey, have you seen the gossip site JuicyCampus.com?"
"I'm not going to lie, I cried the first time I saw it," Diaz says, describing her reaction to an anonymous post that called her a "drama-loving bitch," a "huge slut," and her boyfriend a "midget troll."
The junior elementary education major is a recent victim of the college gossip site JuicyCampus, which debuted last year so students could anonymously "spill the juice" about anyone or anything on campus. FAU was added in early September when it expanded to 500 schools.
After getting over the original shock of the "mean-spirited" comments, Diaz says she realized the site was a complete waste of time.
"None of it is real or true, and I think it's really dumb - some people just have nothing better to do with their time," she says. "I mean, slut? I am in a long-term committed relationship and I love my boyfriend. And a bitch? I pride myself on being a friendly, nice person to everyone. Plus, my boyfriend is 5-foot-7 - he's not at all a midget!"
Diaz and her boyfriend aren't the site's only victims. There are more than 1,100 posts on FAU's page, and the most recent "juicy" scandal involves FAU President Frank Brogan.
A post from Nov. 10 - imitating one of the president's university-wide e-mails - got so much attention it caught the eye of FAU's lawyer.
The full post read: "Message from the President: I want to lick ALL of you...on your mushroom tips....And by the way, class registration for Spring semester is upon us, so please make sure you sign up for classes. Thanks, F. Brogan."
It prompted FAU Associate General Counsel Lawrence Glick to write JuicyCampus administrators and ask them to remove the post.
In his Nov. 14 e-mail, Glick cited one of the rules in the site's "User Conduct Guidelines" that states JuicyCampus would remove a post if it "impersonate[s] any person or entity, including, but not limited to, a JuicyCampus employee, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with any other person or entity."
Charles Brown, FAU's vice president for Student Affairs, said he and President Frank Brogan were "disappointed" by the post, and both of them were involved in the university decision to send the letter to JuicyCampus.
"It's an unthinkable site, and I can't believe we have students writing this kind of crap," Brown says. "We as a university do not want FAU students to participate in the site. We think it is despicable and demeaning."
JuicyCampus responded to the letter from FAU's lawyer almost eight hours later - and refused to remove the quote. Brogan is a public figure and the post was made as a parody, replied a customer service representative.
JuicyCampus founder and CEO Matthew Ivester told the UP last week that this is the first letter he has received from a university lawyer.
"We get stuff from students regularly, but we don't get stuff from administrators as much," the 2005 Duke University graduate says. "This is the first time we have received this type of request."
Ivester said they would have removed the post if it were "actually believable" but told the lawyer FAU's request was "just silly."
"Most administrators take this kind of stuff with a grain of salt. It was always for entertainment purposes only," he adds. "It was meant to be funny and just for fun."
Glick, who did not return e-mails or phone calls requesting an interview, worked with Brown to file a statement on Nov. 17 that again requested that the "misleading posting" be removed. "The act of taking on anyone's identity in this fashion in essence amounts to stealing another person's voice," it read.
The statement also noted that the response from JuicyCampus's customer service department was "unprofessional." Ivester agrees it was.
"It was an unprofessional response, but honestly, it was a stupid request - so it required a stupid answer."
Yet when it comes to the law, the manner in which the situation was handled doesn't really matter, legal experts say.
Michael Fertik, a Harvard Law School graduate and founder of ReputationDefender.com - a service that helps clients remove defamatory online material - told The New York Times he believes JuicyCampus can't be sued for its gossip.
"Legally, JuicyCampus is fully, absolutely immune, no matter what it runs on its site from users," Fertik told The Times in March, "just like AOL is not responsible for nasty comments in its AOL chat rooms."
Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center (SPLC) outside Washington, D.C. - a national organization that offers legal advice to high school and college students - agrees JuicyCampus is not liable for any posts.
In fact, Congress passed a federal law that says just that. The Communications Decency Act (CDA) protects Web sites from being sued for unmonitored posts.
"The CDA says that a person who does no more than passively provide Internet service - including people who operate discussion boards on Web sites - cannot be held liable for injurious speech posted by a third party," LoMonte told the UP.
According to the CDA, which Congress passed in 1996, an Internet service provider that does not screen messages before they are posted is considered a "distributor" instead of a "publisher" - and it cannot be held responsible for those posts.
The only way a victim could take legal action would be to locate the post's author. But because JuicyCampus does not require anyone to register before posting, authors can only be tracked by IP addresses, the unique number that identifies a computer connected to the Internet. However, JuicyCampus says they are not giving up that information unless there's a subpoena - which they could still fight in court.
What FAU can do is block campus access to the site. As of press time, only Tennessee State has done that, but many universities are considering doing so.
Brown says FAU has yet to consider this, but that the university will continue to educate students about the "negative effects" of the site and others like it.
But for students like Tabitha Diaz, the posts are already over and forgotten.
"I think this site is just a fad," she says. "I hope it will pass soon. It really makes college students look bad."
FAU lawyer wants removal of "presidential" post Gossip Web site JuicyCampus has caused a nationwide controversy because college students have posted anonymous, 'juicy' gossip about each other. But earlier this month, an anonymous user posted something about President Frank Brogan - and FAU's top lawyer got involved.
On Nov. 14, FAU General Counsel Lawrence Glick sent a letter to JuicyCampus asking the California-based company to remove an anonymous post that was titled "Brogan gay?" It read, "Message from the President: I want to lick ALL of you…on your mushroom tips" and was signed "F. Brogan." A JuicyCampus customer service representative responded saying Brogan is a public figure, the post was a parody and he was "not taking it down." FAU then sent out a statement and the conversation continued from there.
Full text of the FAU-JuicyCampus correspondence FAU's letter to JuicyCampus FAU's statement to Juicy Campus JuicyCampus' Responses
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