Let me clarify what I mean by the title: I’m certainly not defending the trash that’s posted on Juicy Campus.

Furthermore, I’m not defending Juicy Campus because it does or can produce some good; it certainly doesn’t now and most likely never will.

However, I believe that the kneejerk reactions for shutting it down or banning it are misplaced and that, however vile, it does have a right to exist. With just a bit of effort, we can summon the will to let it die a natural death.

There is no unique case for shutting down or blocking Juicy Campus. By unique I mean there are no arguments or criticisms leveled against it that wouldn’t apply to other things that are already tolerated or indeed embraced by the SMU community and others.

What are the arguments against the site? The most basic is that it is an anonymous forum for juvenile and spiteful comments accessible to anyone with a computer and a keyboard. All of this is true, but it applies equally to any other forum, discussion, or chat room on the Internet. Go to any mildly popular video on YouTube, take a look at the comments, and you’ll see posts just as bad as or worse than anything on Juicy Campus; any site with a “Comment” button has its share of fools. One can’t attack Juicy Campus for this reason without being guilty of applying a double standard.

We could take a different tack and argue that the comments on Juicy Campus are particularly malevolent and of a certain nature and so should be addressed on that basis. Yet this approach has its problems, too. How do you quantify spite? What standards do you use when weighing hostility? It’s an infinitely arbitrary decision that no individual or group is really qualified to address in this instance.

Legal precedents exist for censoring speech that incites illegal action, but for obvious reasons no court will rule against Juicy Campus posts, and furthermore, though the personal attacks on the site are much more savage than the teasing of children on a playground, they have the same shallow nature. They’re not calls for violent action against any individual or group. Hateful opinions are not illegal.

A much more serious criticism is that, in the past, individuals have used Juicy Campus to post the details of crimes committed on campus, particularly the names of victims of sexual assault.

On a personal note, I struggle to think of anything as callow, monstrous, and heartless as painting the victim of a sexual crime as having “asked for it” or otherwise insinuating that it was their fault. I believe in a heavenly justice and fervently hope that those who write such things will reap what they sow.

But as much as my heart goes out to any victim whose name has been exposed, a breach of confidentiality in an ongoing criminal investigation is a legal issue that exists regardless of where it occurs.

If we were to shut down or monitor any place or activity where a breach of secrecy or indeed any crime could occur, we would live in a dystopian police state. The ability of a place or act to be used for ill doesn’t condemn it by fiat. That does not, however, excuse the behavior of anyone who would commit the heinous act of outing a victim; it’s merely an unfortunate fact.

So there really isn’t a viable case for going after Juicy Campus. Yes, it’s mostly used to post personal attacks on people, but there are countless methods to do so, including Facebook and email, not to mention old-fashioned gossip in the flesh. Yes, it’s been used to expose victims of sexual crimes, but almost anything can be utilized for ill purposes and so such an argument alone cannot support censorship.

I have nothing but ill will for Juicy Campus, but when addressing the issue of censorship, one must err on the side of freedom, as the Supreme Court did in the case of Schenck v. United States, roughly declaring that, to be censored, speech must create a “clear and present danger.”

Additionally, most of the actions proposed to address the site, such as legal action or blocking access to the site on on-campus computers, would only approach it on a tactical rather than strategic level, but worse, would just give the site free publicity and fail to solve the problem. An overly-complex metaphor that comes to mind is finding yourself at a party, bumping into a lit candle thereby setting your shirt on fire, and instinctively attempting to douse it with the cocktail you’re holding.

The best course of action is to just hold our collective noses, thicken our skin and allow it to die an ignominious and obscure death, as all internet fads tend to do, for that’s really all it is: a fad which even the immature will tire of soon enough. And yes, I am fully aware of the irony of this article given my suggestion, but if I can convince a few people to just ignore the site, that’s progress towards its inevitable twilight.

There will always be another Juicy Campus, but if we learn to pity the insecure gossipmongers rather than reacting to them, they become much less of a nuisance.

John Jose is a junior finance and economics double major. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].