Hundreds, if not thousands, of Whitman students were either appalled or elated at the news that Whitman’s People Search is becoming a social networking site. As soon as students click on the new banner (and are asked to sign a lengthy Terms of Agreement contract), users are whisked away to a page giving a list of “People you might know.” From this list, students can pick to add friends or block friends. If you choose to block someone, a pre-generated passive-aggressive message is sent to the blocked person telling them that you don’t want to be friends.
M.C. Bo, spokesman of the site and transfer student from South China, commented on the block function by explaining, “Students here are busy. We know people don’t really want to talk to each other; they just do it to collect friends and gain gossip. We just took out the step where you have to actually interact, while still maintaining the same interactions you know and love.”
Other features include the ability to add professors, as well as the virtual library option that allows students to use each other’s webcams and study together, even if they don’t want to.
“It’s just like real life here,” said Bo. Other functionality along these lines includes a “look from across the library” option that allows you to access cameras across the library and look at that special someone before you can choose to “study with them.”
Whitman’s new CreeplesearchTM board is still maintaining that having someone’s home address, phone number, school picture and campus address simply “allows students the experience of an ever-globalizing world.”
Recall that Facebook started off in a similar fashion. Whitman’s social network will allow millions––if not billions––of people access to each other’s personal information.
But, as CreeplesearchTM president Zac Porker explicates, “If everything is public and nothing is private, then what does private even mean? We’re trying to eliminate the public/private binary just as we did with the gender binary.”
Beta testers––coincidentally, all of whom are Phis––say their favorite feature is the chat, which allows students the ability to interact in the fashion that Bo explained.
“It’s cool, it edits out all the words that Whitman students think are bad. I don’t like homophobia or racism, and now the system shoots back a reply to the offender simply stating ‘Not here, dude. Not here.’ I love how sensitive we’re being to people’s feelings,” said one tester.
In the coming semester, all students will be forced to have their people searches changed to CreeplesearchTM. Projections show that soon, with no more need for the library, the building’s third and fourth floors will be replaced with a server room, while the lower floors will be converted into CreeplesearchTM headquarters. Just as Facebook put Harvard on the map, Whitman expects CreeplesearchTM to do exactly the same.
