And there was much rejoicing in frats and sororities across America: anonymous gossip forum JuicyCampus has gone out of business.

JuicyCampus is best (and only) remembered on Columbia’s campus for briefly surging in popularity after former CCSC president Michelle Diamond explored banning the site. When opposed on the grounds that this was “a university, not communist China,”  (not to mention that it would be nearly impossible to block) Diamond quickly backed off, and the site returned to obscurity.

In the end, though, the recession killed JuicyCampus. “In these historically difficult economic times, online ad revenue has plummeted and venture capital funding has dissolved,” wrote JuicyCampus “founder and CEO” Matt Ivester in a press release. “JuicyCampus’ exponential growth outpaced our ability to muster the resources needed to survive this economic downturn.” Every cloud really does have a silver lining.

Gothamist is reporting that CCSC has just voted 25-12 in favor of banning Juicy Campus. The New York Post picked up the story too, and naturally sat down to speak with Matt Sanchez about the issue. “‘It’s like taking graffiti from a bathroom wall and showing it to the world,’ he said.”

And CCSC—despite the impossibility of actually doing so—has metaphorically knocked down that metaphoric bathroom wall.  

UPDATE 7:43 PM: Gothamist and New York Post did not fact check. At all. Bwog just got off the phone with Alidad Damooei, CCSC VP of Policy. Damooei—who has already gotten several worried phone calls about the fake news—claims that a mischievous tipster must have sent in a fake tip to Gothamist and the Post. Damooei explains that the discussion of a ban is “off the table.” 

April fools?

Several readers have tipped Bwog off that the cover story for this week’s New York Times Magazine discusses transgender students, and centers specifically around Rey, a transgender student who enrolled at Barnard last year. The article takes a look at the treatment of transgender students at different universities–for instance, Wesleyan uses gender-neutral pronouns like “ze” and “hir”–as well as what it means to be transgender at a women’s college. 

Rey discusses his first week at Barnard, during which his room mate felt uncomfortable that she was “being asked to live with a man,” after enrolling at a women’s college. Rey and his parents met with Dean of the College Dorothy Denburg about the situation, and it was eventually decided that enrolling in the School of General Studies might be a better fit. Rey now describes himself as very happy after an awful first semester. The long-ish but incredibly interesting article can be read online in its entirety.

Also in the New York Times of Columbia-related interest is an article about everyone’s favorite little-controversy-that-could Juicy Campus. The piece focuses on the aftermath of scandalous Juicy Campus posts regarding one student at Yale (who participated in an amateur pornographic film) and one at Baylor University (who was called a slut).

The recent attempts to “outlaw” the site at Pepperdine University were also mentioned, but ultimately the student leading the crusade against Juicy Campus expressed regret about drawing attention to it in the first place.

“Looking back, it was a mistake,” said Austin Maness, a senior who wrote the resolution but now feels that it only increased students’ awareness of Juicy Campus. “Curiosity killed the cat,” he said, “and everyone started going to the site.”

– JNW