AMANDA DEDIE
Special to The Leader
YikYak: The seemingly new favorite app amongst college students, where anonymous users post about professors, classes, people and more. Sounds fun, right?
Not always.
On Oct. 23, a student at SUNY Canton yaked, “This is a message to all SUNYCanton students,if you vale your life do not go to class tomorrow,I plan on killing myself but before that I plan taking as many of you worthles piles of crap,be ready (sic).”
While the original post was taken seriously, with calls to Canton’s on-campus police and administrators, urgent action was not taken until a second threat with the same language and threat was posted. At that time, the school cancelled classes and went into complete lockdown, urging all off-campus students to stay away from campus. Residence hall students were warned to stay in their rooms with the doors locked.
On Oct. 25, SUNY Canton student Alexis Vazquez was apprehended with responsibility for the post.
The lesson? Nothing on the internet is ever truly anonymous.
Understandably, anonymity of Yik Yak allows for various conversations and opinions that may not otherwise occur if there was a face to the message — “Professor so-and-so is terrible,” or “I like the girl I always see with pink hair, but she’d never go for someone like me.” — are all mild examples of things people say on an app where their identity is concealed. For statements such as these, anonymity is okay. But where is the line?
Social media isn’t just a personal, thought-sharing platform anymore. It used to be that teens would log into their Myspace, post statuses and bulletins, take BFF surveys and change their display name to something cool and catchy. But it isn’t that simple anymore. Anyone can see these posts, no matter what privacy steps are taken.
In the case of SUNY Canton, it wasn’t just the students that had seen the threat — it was the staff, too.
“At the same time, our staff and students noticed the threat on Yik Yak and they immediately took screenshots and communicated it to our university police department,” said Gregory Kie, senior media relations manager at SUNY Canton.
It’s not just fellow Fredonia students seeing these Yaks — it could be professors, staff, anyone.
“There are risks with using any social media platforms, personally and professionally. Employers will search your Facebook and Twitter feeds,” said Kie. “The things you say can impact your life, although in this case it was much more drastic.”
In terms of blocking the app and preventing the situation from occurring again, however, Kie says that it isn’t an option — for now.
“We have looked into it,” he said. “At this point, we would rather take an educational standpoint and inform our students of the correct and incorrect ways to use social media, and what can happen if you use social media incorrectly.”
Luckily, the SUNY Canton community came out of the ordeal unharmed. The guilty party has been arrested and is looking at five years in jail.
“The campus community has been great from the lockdown. We saw these wonderful postings; for every bad posting we saw on Yik Yak, we saw three supportive posts,” said Kie. “It’s been a wonderful sense of community. It’s been amazing to see people come and work together, and bond and take care of one another during this time.”
However, it shouldn’t take a sense of fear to strike a sense of bonding within a community. Anything said online can be traced back to its poster, despite the sense of anonymity that is promised. It doesn’t even need to be as drastic as a threat; any form of bullying or negativity can be traced back to the person who started it if its effect becomes great enough.
One never knows the effect their words could have on another. If someone posted about another on Yik Yak, it’d probably still hurt that person just a little bit, even though they don’t know who is saying it.
“We have a hard time understanding why social media can’t be a civil, positive and engaging place,” said Nicholas Gunner, social media manager and assistant webmaster at Fredonia. “The thing about social media networks is that it could have such a positive effect on our lives, and we see it, over and over again, being misused. I just don’t understand why people can’t be nice with one another.”