FREEDOM of expression has played an important role throughout my University career and throughout those of my peers, and Juicy Campus now gives many more students the same opportunity we have had. Future generations no longer have to go to the trouble to plan an open forum to express their views; they will have one at their fingertips. Although I do not applaud the site, nor do I respect the members of the community that submit to it topics for discussion, I appreciate its presence. The site provides a forum that has long been missing on Grounds -- a forum that reveals the inner-voice of the average student.
My hope is that students planning to attend the University view Juicy Campus. They will there be faced with the perspectives that will surround them on a daily basis at this institution. They will see what many of us were unaware of upon matriculation. They will see the racism, sexism, hatred and downright ignorance that many communities on Grounds face on a daily basis. They will see a clearer picture of what the future holds for them and, hopefully, be forced to put aside memories from their tour of the beautiful grounds of the University and see what festers beneath the surface of the institution.
Publishing student opinion is perhaps the most dangerous function of the site, at least in the eyes of the administration. Administrators no longer have a foolproof way of controlling public access to the ignorance of the student body. The public can still browse the propaganda spread through UVA Today and Inside U.Va., but donors and philanthropists (and most important, scholars) now have a more complete view of the University student body.
Administration-based discourses still prevail, but on Juicy Campus those discourses are brought down to a level with which students everywhere can identify. Students see discourses of the majority morphed into new forms that can be challenged more easily. Challenging the institution calls for unrest to develop at the bottom of society, and let's be honest, you can't get much lower on the totem than Juicy Campus. If it takes having access to the pages of Juicy Campus for students to express their opinions, that certainly says something about the mind-set of the student body. But are we even using the pages to challenge the institution and dominant discourses? No. We're using the site to hurt others. We are afraid of challenging the institution that has advanced these discourses, but we aren't afraid of insulting our classmates and neighbors. We are cutting off our nose to spite our face.
According to the beloved Commission on the Future of the University, an extremely valuable part of the University experience is what occurs outside of the classroom, where students put their knowledge into action. Juicy Campus now gives a clearer picture of what occurs outside of the classroom and where students are investing their intellectual energies. The University experience is clearly much more multi-faceted than we would believe from listening to the publications from the Office of University Relations. Viewing the experiences of other students on Juicy Campus, it seems I've missed out on a great deal of student life at the University.
Juicy Campus has taught me a lesson. At one point in my University career I pushed for the creation of a "Pledge Against Prejudice" that would call on students to show their enthusiasm for preventing bigotry. Today I understand that such an effort would be completely futile. Bigotry is sewn into the fabric of the institution, and to try to unthread it would mean tearing apart that fabric and sewing it anew. Some may dismiss this view as fatalistic, but I've come to see the entire student experience at the University with a fatalistic mentality. We hold our diversity forums, our awareness weeks, our leadership dinners and our award ceremonies, but what have we accomplished? We continue to applaud ourselves, but at what cost? We haven't really done anything except stand by while traditions are further entrenched and our sense of self-accomplishment skyrockets.
Juicy Campus is the embodiment of what is wrong at this University. It shows how we continue to fail to reach the populations student leaders are here to serve and with which the rest of us are supposed to live in harmony. Juicy Campus reveals that no matter how hard we work to overcome institutional inequities, no matter what surface measures we take to combat intolerance, will never live in harmony with those around us. Until we recognize this, we will continue to make the same mistakes.
Ryan McElveen is a fourth-year in the College.
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