Yik Yak

Ethics Observations On “White Student Unions”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

White-Student-Union

African American students have demanded “safe spaces” on various campuses, to gather and avoid white intrusions and “micro-aggressions.” They have also  held Black Lives Matter  demonstrations expressing hostility to “white privilege,” and have asserted that views opposing  theirs—including support for free speech— should be regarded as hate speech and require institutional discipline. These episodes, still ongoing, have spawned a backlash in the form of “white student union” Facebook pages connected to several universities, and some real world manifestations as well.

Observations: Continue reading →

Unethical App: Yik Yak

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments
The cute Yik Yak mascot, hanging out at a fraternity, where ethics go to die.

The cute Yik Yak mascot, hanging out at a fraternity, where ethics go to die.

Yik Yak is a suddenly surging social media app that is running viral on college campuses. The app allows users to post anonymous messages (“yaks”) that only appear to users within a 1.5-mile radius. The New York Times called it “ a virtual community bulletin board—or maybe a virtual bathroom wall at the student union.”

Yik Yak is unethical.

There.

Yik Yak was created in late 2013 by Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington, fraternity brothers (and based on their names, escapees from a Dickens novel) who came up with the idea after seeing that there were only a handful of popular Twitter accounts at Furman College, where they were frat brothers, almost all belonging to campus big shots and athletes. With Yik Yak, they say, they hoped to create a more “democratic social media network” where users didn’t need a large number of followers or friends to have one’s thoughts read widely. Continue reading →