‘Confessions’ angers Brandon University students

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This article was published 11/03/2015 (3947 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRANDON — Brandon University students are speaking out against an online ‘confessions’ page that they believe has become a breeding ground for cyberbullying.

The anonymous Facebook page popped up sometime in June 2014 and has since reached more than 3,000 followers and roughly 800 comments have been posted.

Students can anonymously submit a comment or confession, and then the page’s anonymous creator posts it online.

“We’d like to see it shut down,” BU anti-bullying society president Krystal Kayne said, adding some of the posts violate Bill 18, Manitoba’s anti-bullying legislation. “It puts the reputation of BU into question and what kind of students are here.”

Although none of the comments posted appears to call out any individual by name, other students have started chiming in and tagging people on Facebook.

“The moderator should be held accountable as well and not hide behind the anonymity,” Kayne said, adding she receives an average of two to five complaints from students about the page on a weekly basis.

“Students, they go there for a laugh, some of them find it pathetic.”

Some of the more tame posts on the page read “I had sex with my prof for an A+,” “I’m sick and tired of our showers in McMaster hall being cold … if your shower or anything is wrong COMPLAIN!,” and “If admin doesn’t start filtering what gets posted, the name of the page may as well be changed to ‘BU Bitching.’”

“It’s very concerning to have these images in writing online,” BU student Aaron Thompson said. “We do value freedom of speech … but freedom of consequences is a very dangerous thing.”

Jessica Fortier, a first-year BU student, said she’s aware of the page but doesn’t plan to submit a confession of her own anytime soon, while Harley Murdock, a second-year BU student, believes the page only fuels rumours.

“It’s like online bullying,” Murdock said, adding the best way to get the page shut down is for students to stop engaging with it. “I find it ridiculous. I don’t look at it.”

A recent article in The Quill, BU’s student newspaper, claimed to have tracked down the page’s creator, who said they initially created the site because many other universities have their own confession page.

The article also quoted the creator as saying they would “gladly remove the page,” admitting “it has caused a lot of nonsense that I wasn’t prepared for.”

Brandon University Students’ Union president Joel Springer said students have been expressing concern over the page for some time.

“We do not support cyberbullying,” Springer said. “There’s no place for cyberbullying … or anything that would attack individuals.”

Without revealing too many details, Springer said they’ve presented these concerns to BU administration, and it’s being looked into.

If students are being bullied either on campus or online, Kayne suggest they contact student services and speak to a counsellor.

» lenns@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @LindseyEnns

 

— Brandon Sun