On Facebook, there is an anonymous confession page for my college called “Rollins Confessions.” Here, students can submit “confessions” about their experience at Rollins, and the administrator of the page will post them without a name, keeping the identity of the submitter a secret. The page sparked controversy a few months ago when a sorority member anonymously submitted the contents of her sorority’s ritual. The top-secret weekly practice which is sacred and specific to each sorority at the national level, and it was posted. However, most posts on the page are less serious than this, particularly those like a recent post that referred to a person with certain initials as ridden with STDs. Yeah, this is the kind of thing that Rollins Confessions has going for it. As you can imagine, the page has become far less popular these days.

Still, with Rollins Confessions lowering in popularity came the rise of an app called "Yik Yak." Active on most college campuses, Yik Yak is essentially the same thing as Rollins Confessions: People anonymously post to the app, and the post will show up anywhere within a mile of where the person posted. (I like to think of it as “anonymous Twitter.”) It’s location-based, so if you live on or spend a lot of time at your college campus, it’s likely that all the posts you see on Yik Yak while you’re there will be from your campus. I regrettably spent a good portion of my first semester of college browsing Yik Yak, to find largely the same type of posts that show up on Rollins Confessions.

Someone will call a boy with certain initials cute and secretly hope that others will see and “upvote” the Yak, indicating that they agree. A different anonymous poster might diss a certain professor for giving too much homework. Many posters are just venting about their friends, breakups, or crushes, but sometimes— and this is rather common — posters will bash “Social Justice Warriors” and other people they feel are being too “politically correct.” From here it gets ugly. Not only are groups like these get shot down by Yik Yak users, but people often use the app to share hugely disrespectful posts such as, “Unfit girls make me physically ill,” or to make blatantly racist or sexist jokes. This isn’t the entirety of the Yik Yak feed, but posts like these are alarmingly frequent, at least far more than they should be.

There is nothing inherently wrong with being able to anonymously vent. After all, not everything should be posted publicly as a Facebook status or a Tweet, like complaints about one’s own love or sex life. However, the privilege to post anonymously does not give someone a license to make downright mean, embarrassing or exploitative posts. As a member of a Greek organization, I feel that the exposure of a sorority’s secret ritual on a public page like Rollins Confessions is disrespectful to a national organization that holds its sacred practices dear. As someone who believes in equality for all social groups, it is sad to see people use a digital mask as a way of showing an offensive side to them without receiving repercussions for it. And as a student who is active on a college campus, it’s disappointing to see that other students feel like anonymous hate is acceptable.

I’m not advocating against these types of anonymous posting centers. Of course, not every student who posts harmful things will do so anonymously. But the fact that I’ve seen the majority of hateful posts surrounding my campus on anonymous sites like Yik Yak or Rollins Confessions, rather than openly on Twitter or Facebook, tells me that those sources enable this type of social media behavior. Why are students so quick to bash fellow students in our campus culture? All of us got to college and are working hard to make something of ourselves. Shouldn’t we be supporting each other instead?

A recent post submitted to the Rollins Confessions page suggested that all students taking gender or racial studies classes were wasting their time. Considering the posts I’ve seen on Yik Yak, unfortunately, this was not surprising to see. To the person who submitted this “confession,” I would like to ask, "What are you gaining by putting down the endeavors of students who study something you deem a joke?" That’s what the culture of anonymous bashing is doing, putting down other students. The problem isn't the anonymous spreading of ideas; the problem is the rampant negativity.

The fact that someone’s identity when they submit one of these posts is usually a secret doesn’t make it okay to spread pointless hate. Lack of positivity on a college campus, whether it’s about someone’s sexual history or course of study or physical appearance, is poisonous. This is especially true for small campuses like Rollins, where ideas spread like wildfire. As a community, colleges should be positive, and the ability to have a positive environment is hindered by so many students putting on a mask and shouting about what’s wrong with everyone else. Maybe it’s time for students to start looking at their own behaviors instead, and seeing that spreading the love instead of spreading the hate would look a whole lot nicer.