In the last two months, there have been numerous major events on campus: the Lawrence Hall flood, Turning Point’s return to campus and increased gossip in anonymous Yik Yak conversations. All of these have created confusion and fear among both staff and students, leading to another issue: misinformation.
As someone who has been on Yik Yak since I started here in August, I have begun to notice much more targeted gossip directed at a single person or a group. After Turning Point’s appearance on campus, there was discourse on Yik Yak about a protester who was supposedly faking a disability for attention. Other commenters said that wasn’t true and they had a disability where they weren’t completely non-mobile.
Those comments have since been deleted from the Yik Yak post, but that specific example shows how quickly a false claim about someone can spread and potentially harm them.
Another recent example occurred during the night of the Lawrence Hall floods on floors 13 through 20.
There was a disconnect between students and staff regarding the incident and the subsequent steps taken after the flood, so students used YikYak to share their accounts of what they believed had happened.
Some of these claims were so outlandish they were hard to believe, but the rumors still spread anyway. As a result, facts were conflated, and the actual events were exaggerated.
Students were in a panic, and staff were working to address the issue and dispel rumors about the flood. The rise of misinformation, especially when spread anonymously on Yik Yak, has been damaging to students and administrators.
There are two reasons why gossip and misinformation spread so quickly: not enough student-to-administrator contact and no one stopping rumors when they begin.
When students aren’t hearing directly from staff and administrators, the flow of information gets cut off, leading to events being blown out of proportion and distorting what really happened.
As with the flood, emails were sent out to affected residents, but they were lost along the way and not shared to other students, leaving those not affected to figure out what happened on their own.
As a result, the REs had to do twice as much work, trying to calm the students while also fixing the issue at hand. I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault per se, especially in this case, but I do think communication and more frequent updates on issues to the campus community will let this level of panic not happen again.
Another issue I see, especially on Yik Yak, is people starting a rumor or saying something untrue about a person and no one stopping it. Because no one stops the rumor, it grows, and people think what is being said about that person is true.
Sometimes what is being shared is true while people might not want to believe it. But when something isn’t true, real people are at the receiving end of lies, and that can hurt them academically and emotionally.
I think we all need to stop and think.
Ask yourself: do you know the facts, or are you just following the crowd because they all say it’s true?
In events like the flood, if you don’t know what’s going on or no one is giving you information, don’t take to Yik Yak pretending you know what’s going on. Ask resident educators (RE) first.
If they don’t know, go higher: student life, housing or any administrator in that field. If we stop the spread of misinformation and gossip when it happens, Point Park and its students will benefit greatly.
