Confessions of sex in academic buildings. Stories of roommate drama. Secrets about feeling alone in college. All of this, and more, appear on the Syracuse Confessions Facebook page.

The page, which asks students to send their most “heartfelt, disgusting, hilarious, filthy and embarrassing confessions from Syracuse,” launched Jan. 25, and has quickly become a topic of conversation on campus. To date, the page has nearly 2,000 likes with more than 250 “confessions” posted.

But Syracuse University’s confession page isn’t the only one of its kind. Similar pages have sprung up across the nation at universities such as Harvard, Tufts and Clemson, to name a few. These anonymous pages are a part of a national trend that is beginning to concern professors and administrators.

Confessions pages like SU’s can raise concerns regarding anonymity, according to an article on the Inside Higher Ed website. Bill Oglesby, a professor of media ethics and law at Virginia Commonwealth University, said in the article that if an individual mentioned in a confession can be identified, they may be able to take legal action, depending on the seriousness of the secret.

“If someone’s reputation or character is damaged,” Oglesby said in the article, “he or she may have a cause of action for libel, if the person who posted the defamation can be identified.”

This issue of online anonymity is one SU’s Department of Public Safety takes very seriously.

Kathy Pabis, commander of day patrol operations for DPS, said although DPS is not monitoring the Syracuse Confessions page specifically, they are aware of it.

“Because there are so many sites and pages like this one, policing and managing all of them would be difficult,” Pabis said in an email. “We would, however, investigate complaints about this page’s content which are brought to our attention.”

Though the page is becoming popular, SU students don’t always appreciate the stories, particularly those pertaining to illegal acts on campus, said Kyle Fenton, who frequently visits and comments on the page.

“With the illegal activity, hopefully they’re joking. And if they’re not, then they need to get a reality check,” said Fenton, a sophomore in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management and School of Information Studies. “If it happened, it happened, but don’t put it up there expecting some type of response that generates traffic just because you’re an idiot.”

Kyle Ishman, a junior political science major, agreed, but said it is the shocking nature of many of the posts that keep people reading the page, regardless of how raunchy or immoral some of the confessions are.

Ishman noted some of his favorite confessions, including one from a student who used to urinate in his roommate’s lemon lime Gatorade bottles, or another from a male student who would have sex on his roommate’s bed so he didn’t have to wash his own sheets as frequently.

Much of what is posted is of a sexual nature. One student confessed he and his girlfriend had sex inside Hendricks Chapel, leaving the used condom in a prayer book. Another confession mentions “hooking up” in a practice room in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Yet another describes receiving oral sex in a bathroom in Carnegie Library.

Confessions like that shocked even Ishman.

“There is some stuff on there that I didn’t think people would actually do in life, like at all,” he said.

But the confessions are not the only controversial postings on the page. Debates often break out in the comments section underneath the posts, particularly about confessions regarding sexual promiscuity or relationships.

Fenton said he often voices his opinion in the comments section, “liking” or commenting on posts he can relate to or simply enjoys. He said he has even started to gain attention for his input on the page. Fenton said he first commented on a post from a girl complaining about her boyfriend, which immediately received notice.

“Right now I’m at 125 ‘likes’ for that one comment. It gets a ton of traffic,” he said.

But Ishman said he worries some of what is posted on the page takes it too far, and that people may start getting offended.

Besides debates on sexuality and relationships, some of the posts pertain to SU students’ complaints about students from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry while others are more racially charged. In some cases, the posts border on harassment, which Pabis said is a concern for DPS.

“We highly encourage anyone who feels that they are victims of bullying or other forms of harassment to report it to us,” Pabis said, adding that DPS has a link on its website that allows students to anonymously report non-emergency incidents.

With students attacking one another on Facebook and posts describing illegal activities on campus, it begs the question of who is monitoring the page. The administrator of Syracuse Confessions declined to be identified by The Daily Orange, but students have some guesses as to what type of person is behind the page.

Junior biology major Lindsay McCabe said her only guess is that the person behind the page is a female, which Fenton agreed with.

But, Fenton said, he’s not overly concerned with finding out who the founder of the page is.

“When you know the person behind it, it doesn’t really ruin what the page stands for, but it kind of ruins the effect,” he said. “When you know who’s behind it, you might know what they’re doing behind the scenes. I like that there’s the mystery of it. I don’t know and I kind of like it that way.”

Published on March 4, 2013 at 10:56 pm

Contact Avery: avhartma@syr.edu | @averyhartmans