This evening’s Past the Page is brought to you straight from the Indy office, where we’re working hard to bring you our November issue. As all of you probably already know, Matt Ivester (Duke 05), founder of JuicyCampus, is on the Georgetown campus tonight to answer questions about his website. Tierney Sneed wrote a commentary about JuicyCampus last month, so this is the obvious tie-in.

I was lucky enough to have Ivester visit my Celebrity and Spectacle class this afternoon, so we were able to have more of a genuine conversation than what’s going down in the ICC tonight. The highlights, below the cut:

JuicyCampus tracks IP addresses, so if necessary, they can report posts to internet service providers. Ivester says that so far they’ve reported two posts for making school shooting threats.

Regarding anonymity, Ivester says that JC is “optionally anonymous. Anyone could sign their name if they wanted. Anonymity allows people to speak more honestly about controversial topics.”

JC is “immensely entertaining” and its audience “can choose what to read.” It’s “unsubstantiated, anonymous gossip, which is fun.”

One student asked about the potential of JC to harm people’s lives and reputations. Ivester responded that the site provides “a great opportunity to educate. Privacy is eroding online quickly. We are the Facebook generation. Universities now are having discussions about how to react when you don’t like what someone is saying about you online.”

The student continued, asking if Ivester would feel guilty if harm was done to someone as a result of JC. He said, “It’s not my fault. I don’t feel guilty. It’s a forum where we allow people to say almost whatever they want. It would be on the people who made the post. If you don’t have to look at it, you’re bringing it on yourself. No one is forcing you to look at it. If we didn’t provide this forum, some other site would.”

Ivester elaborated on the three kinds of posts that JC removes: “Spam. Hate speech. But, it has to be attacking a whole group of people. We err on the side of looseness. A post that was titled, ‘Why are there so many n*****s on campus?’ would be allowed. That’s different than saying ‘I hate all n*****s and wish they would die.’ That would be removed. Also, contact information, like phone, e-mail, dorm room.”

Finally, as for the future of JC, Ivester said, “We’re on 500 campuses right now, which gives us a lot of room for expansion. We’re not looking into new user groups. For the next couple of years, we’ll have our hands full with college students.”

Also, Ivester left a teaser: “Next week, we’ll have a new section: ‘Rankings.’ But I’m not telling what it is yet. You’ll have to wait and see. We’re sure it’s going to be popular though.”