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The Daily Wildcat

The Daily Wildcat

 

U of A Confessions Facebook page promotes UA anonymity

A Facebook confessions page is quickly taking over Wildcats’ newsfeeds, providing a public forum for students to anonymously confess their deepest, darkest, sometimes wildly inappropriate secrets.

Confessions on the U of A Confessions page, created in Oct. 2012, are submitted through an anonymous survey linked to the Facebook page. Many of the posts talk about illegal activities like drinking and drug use, but other posts cover embarrassing incidents, sex, relationships and more.

The page administrators try to not post anything with names or greek letters anymore, according to the page creator, a computer science sophomore who asked to remain anonymous.

While the page gains new fans every day, it could eventually face problems if someone found out who the confessors are, according to Kathy Riester, associate dean of students, director of the UA Parent and Family Association and the Arizona Board of Regents
campus safety coordinator.

“It’s not an official university website … so obviously we have no control over what is posted there, what content, what comments, anything like that,” Riester said. “Depending on what’s posted, it could probably become an issue.”

If a student posts that they are going to do something illegal, and if office members are able to determine who the student is, there could be consequences, she added.

On Monday morning, a student reported concerns about the page to the Dean of Students office. However, after the post in question was removed, the student withdrew their concerns, according to Riester.

“I think it’s a good thing. It lets people know things, but you don’t have to necessarily put who you are,” said Amanda Luccitti, a speech and hearing sciences sophomore. “Some of them [confessions] are interesting.”

In a confession last week, one person wrote they would streak through a classroom in Centennial Hall provided the post got over 500 “likes.” Although the post got well over its required number of likes, the streaker never showed up.

Rumors circulated that a UAPD officer knew about the page and was waiting outside, but according to Juan Alvarez, a UAPD public information officer, the department has no knowledge of the page or that post. Alvarez said any tips they had gotten about a streaker would have come from an anonymous tip line.

With no real problems as of yet, the page now has more than 7,000 likes.

“It’s strangely addicting,” said Erin Przybylinski, a political science freshman. “I feel like half the things, I think, are just made up, like people will say extremely gross things or outrageous things just because it’s anonymous.”

It even seems that professors have caught onto the trend, according to posts on the page.

“I had a professor admit to the class yesterday that our quizzes were not ready to be handed back since he got caught up reading UA Confessions and didn’t finish grading. Win,” reads one post.

Besides the page creator, there are about 10 other page administrators, although only two are very active, the creator said. Between them, they each post confessions on the page daily.

“It’s been pretty positive. Some people send in a lot of complaints about how I don’t post their stuff, but there is, like, 1,000 [confessions] waiting to be posted, so I’m not going to get to all of them,” the creator said.

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