<< Previous   of   Next >>

ADVERTISEMENT

CONTACT THE HERALD

Robert Frank, City Editor frank@heraldnet.com

Marysville-Pilchuck student gossip fading on Web site

Anonymous profiles filled with rumors about Marysville high school students have been taken off an online message board.

By Kaitlin Manry
Herald Writer

MARYSVILLE -- The furor surrounding malicious online gossip about Marysville-Pilchuck High School students appears to be fading.

Around 50 gossip-ridden profiles of Marysville students have been removed from a gossip Web site in the last few days. Nearly all the profiles were created anonymously to spread rumors about other kids' supposed sexual experiences, abortions, eating disorders, diseases and drug use.

"Kids started talking to each other about the inappropriateness of it," said Tracy Suchan Toothaker, principal at Marysville-Pilchuck High School. "I think kids took care of it themselves, more than anything adults did. We have students who are good young people and they were offended on behalf of others. They were hurt."

Despite Web site rules that make erasing posts difficult, the number of Marysville gossip profiles on the site has decreased from more than 200 last Thursday to 157 on Tuesday.

Elizabeth Bloch, one of the founders of the company that created the site, remains unapologetic about the hurtful rumors posted on the Wilmington, N.C.-based site.

Though she doesn't think high school students should post "trash talk," she won't remove it unless enough users complain about a piece of gossip and use tools on the site to label it "BS" or "not gossip." Users can delete what they post, but they can't delete what others post about them.

"We can't legally censor or remove things just because we feel like doing it," said Bloch, 25. "People who use (the site) need to be responsible for what they write. That's what it's about. It's user-generated. It's not me deciding what should be posted or what shouldn't. Gossip, when you do it right, is a really, really good thing."

Marysville-Pilchuck students have used the site to rate each others' performance in bed, call each other derogatory names and list sex acts individual students allegedly participated in. They question others' sexual identity, post unflattering pictures and ridicule others' physical handicaps.

Kids still talk constantly about the rumors posted on the site -- in class, at lunch and after school, said senior Elizabeth VanPatten. Students are devastated by the gossip, she said.

"Everybody being curious about it is what's making it be so much more popular," she said. "The fact that it's anonymous makes students feel like they're fearless; so they can say whatever they want without any consequences."

Because school administrators haven't been able to figure out who posted which comments on the site, no one has been disciplined, Suchan Toothaker said.

Student leaders met to discuss the site, but decided not to start a school-wide conversation on the issue, said Suchan Toothaker. They thought ignoring the site would be more productive, she said.

The district has blocked the site from its computers, but some students still are getting access to the site in school by going through proxy sites that route them to the gossip site, said Ken Ainsworth, the school district's technology director.

Last week, about 1,500 of the site's 50,000 registered users were from Marysville, Bloch said. She refused to provide updated site-use numbers Tuesday unless The Herald agreed to print her site's name and address.

"It seems that traffic to the site has created a lot of irresponsible behavior and we're not in the business of promoting that kind of thing," said Neal Pattison, The Herald's executive editor.

VanPatten, the Marysville student, refuses to look at the site. Whenever her friends talk about it, she tells them to stop.

She said Tuesday that she plans to contact Bloch to tell her how the gossip site is tearing apart her school. She wants Bloch to shut down the site.

"For her to try to justify what this site is and what it's done is ridiculous," said VanPatten, 18. "There's a difference between freedom of speech and harming and harassing people."



Reporter Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com.