By Student-created Facebook pages feature IUSB confessions, admirers and snoozers
By: SARAH E. WARD
Staff Writer
There has been a recent rash of IU South Bend Facebook pages popping up, and they’re grabbing students’ attention.
The IUSB Secret Admirers page and the IUSB confessions page are run by Jessica Williams, a senior. As of Sunday, Nov. 10, the pages had 436 likes and 220 likes, respectively.
“I started the secret admirers page probably in March and a couple of weeks, maybe a month later, I wanted to do the confessions page as well,” Williams said.
The IUSB Confessions Facebook page acts as an open forum for students to express their ideas, complaints, worries, fears or anything else they may want to get off their chest. Recently there was issue on campus dealing with the way the IUSB Student Government Association (SGA) was handling student activity funds. Williams said there were so many posts about the SGA that she had to eventually stop posting them.
“For a week there, there was a whole lot of stuff going down with the SGA. We had all sorts of people submitting stuff to our site and I thought ‘Wow this is kind of a big deal.’ Everyone is feeling free to express their opinions. I eventually stopped posting the SGA stuff because I had so many people complain about it,” she said.
Preface photo/Sarah Ward
People from both sides including SGA senators and the vice president of the SGA commented on posts at the IUSB Confessions page during that time. Although the SGA meetings are open to all students who want to attend and voice concerns, Williams feels this platform is important for those who may not feel comfortable attending those meetings.
“It was kind of interesting just because we don’t really have a place where you can safely voice your opinion but I feel like this was really beneficial to be able to do that. We have a lot of people really getting their ideas out that wouldn’t necessarily be comfortable going to an SGA meeting and expressing that.”
There is also an IUSB Confessions Twitter account, but Williams said she is not affiliated with the account and doesn’t know who the administrator is. Williams has received complaints about the two accounts because of the repeated content but has no control over the contents being posted on the Twitter account.
“It’s very frustrating because it looks like we are affiliated but I have no idea who runs it,” she said.
She explained that she did tweet to the page explaining they were on Facebook and it was redundant to have two pages on two social media sites. Williams said they responded very negatively to her tweet.
“They were like, ‘Oh my gosh your such a hater and no one even uses Facebook anymore, everyone’s on Twitter now you must be some weird old person.’”
Williams was shocked at the negative response but feels her page is different because the posts are anonymous and even she does not know who is posting the comments. Those wishing to post to the pages can do so in a forum where they can remain anonymous.
“People come up to me and there like ‘Oh who said that about me?’ and I truly don’t know,” Williams said.
One Facebook page that is controversial is the IUSB Snoozers page, where unsuspecting sleeping students are photographed in class and then the pictures are posted to the page. The administrator of the snoozer’s page asked to remain anonymous and declined to be interviewed after that person’s criminal justice professor, also a former sheriff, advised them that the page may not be a good idea. The person stated that they would be taking the page down.
As of Sunday, Nov. 10, the page was still active.
Visit the sites:
IUSB Snoozers – IUSB Confessions – IUSB Secret Admirers
