"Don't they know that the Internet is public?"

As promised, Friday is "Dear Millennial Law Prof" day, so I've picked what I think is a really great one. Since Millennial Law Prof is only 3 days old, this also happens to be the only question that's been asked, but that doesn't detract from its greatness.

"Dear Millennial Law Prof:" [it really just said, "Hi Tracy," but that doesn't help me indulge my fantasy that this is the part of the movie -- or tv show; I'm not picky -- where there's a montage of me dashing off responses on my manual typewriter in my quaint home office. The music is something perky that suggests that my responses are witty and upbeat.]

"Why do law students post inappropriate material on the Internet? It's one thing to say that students have always talked about each other and their professors and shared personal information and that this is just how they do it. But it's another thing to suggest that posting those same things on the Internet is the equivalent of the student lounge. Do you have any ideas?"

Thanks for the question. My hypothesis on this is that a lot of the inappropriate use was started by Xers and picked up by Millennials and that Millennials will ultimately be the most effective at curbing it and reigning one another in as they become more purely Millennial and less Xer/Millennial hybrids (as people on the cusp of any two generations tend to be). Keep in mind that I'm not opining here about the Constitutionality of restricting Internet speech; I am opining, though, about whether the speech comports with a particular generation's standards of human decency. Here are some examples of why I think we may see less of this as time goes by:

The Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus reported on February 12 that JuicyCampus, a web site opened this past summer to promote campus gossip, is facing some backlash. The Pepperdine University student government has passed a resolution asking administrators to block the site from the campus network.

Pepperdine's newspaper, The Graphic, reports that, while the resolution was passed by an overwhelming majority, students made compelling arguments on both sides:

Many board members came forward and talked about their personal experiences. SGA Vice President of Administration Austin Maness, who wrote the resolution, called the Web site slander and talked about the pain words can bring.

“When I was a kid I was overweight, I was mocked a lot and made fun of,” Maness said. “I developed an eating disorder for three years and was bulimic. And, furthermore, someone on this Web site thought it would be funny to joke about eating disorders and how they thought it was good for girls to develop anorexia so that they could look sexy. And to me it is just unbelievably inhumane.”

* * *

However, not everyone agreed with the final vote. Senior Off-Campus Senator Mike Masten told the voters to not jump to the extreme of banning the Web site but to choose to fight in a different way. He proposed campaigning against the site to promote awareness, and discuss it with people to tell of the true harm such messages can bring.

“I by no means support this Web site, but the reason I opposed the movement was because I guess you can call it a faith in our student body and that they do have the capability to take responsibility for this,” Masten said. “I felt like banning the Web site should be the last resort, if a resort at all, and censorship should never really be that first stop."

What's interesting about this debate (presumably among Millennial students since we're talking about a university student government) is that the opposing sides both concede that the content is inappropriate and should be limited in some way. They just disagree about whether the best method is a ban or a boycott. This is consistent with the civic-minded, collaborative characteristics of this generation. They seem to be protective of one another and mindful of what's best for the community over the individual.

Pepperdine's Graphic also reports that the site was started by Duke law graduate Matt Ivester "with the mission of facilitating an online community where anonymous free speech could be heard on college campuses." (I can only assume that Ivester developed his "mission" after discovering that there was not nearly enough hostile anonymous drivel online to suit his needs. But I digress . . .) As a recent law school graduate, it's most likely that Matt Ivester is an Xer. I think this is interesting, too, and pretty predictable. Xers tend to be more self-referenced than other-referenced, i.e., they don't think a lot about how their actions impact others.

If a website founded by a young male law graduate sounds eerily familiar, perhaps it's because this comes right on the heels of the lawsuit filed by two Yale law school graduates against the site AutoAdmit. I'd guess, based on other characteristics of the founders that indicate their ages, that they are also Xers. Yale's paper reports about JuicyCampus, which has a Yale "channel," that

those who wish to remove a comment have little to no recourse. The FAQ page admonishes users concerned about the truthfulness of items posted on the site to consider whether statements are fact or opinion.

“Facts can be untrue. Opinions can be stupid, or ignorant, or mean-spirited, but they can’t be untrue,” the page reads. Those who object to posts on factual grounds are instructed to give the posts “a big thumbs down” by clicking an icon next to the post to express disapproval.

"A big thumbs down" sounds like entertainment. It has just enough First Amendment-related language for the site to have some plausible deniability about its motives. But really . . . the best way they could think of to champion the First Amendment was to start an online "slam book"? It doesn't quite pass the smell test. (Again, my point has to do with generational characteristics and not the First Amendment -- I understand that, if Larry Flynt gets to make fun of Jerry Falwell, then we all benefit.)

And it seems that Millennial students realize that "the big thumbs down" is not a "remedy" for the potential damage to their reputations. Thus, the Pepperdine resolution. In addition, students and other critics from Loyola Marymount University have started a Facebook page to encourage the banning of JuicyCampus. This followed an anonymous threat two months ago by an anonymous poster who threatened to kill as many people on the LMU campus as possible before getting killed by the police.

Another characteristic of Millennials is that they are less tolerant of remarks that denegrate someone based on their immutable characteristics. One of the chief complaints about the gossip sites is that much of the content is racist, sexist, and homophobic. My prediction is that the Millennials' increased sensitivity to inappropriate remarks of this type will also fuel their desire to restrict the reach of "slam sites."