VCU Confessions offers anonymous outlet for students

Samantha Foster
Spectrum Editor

Thanks to a new Facebook page, VCU students can anonymously air their secrets, like “I’m 22 years old and still sometimes think of Pokémon,” “I’m a straight guy and I loved ‘50 Shades of Grey,’” or “Every day of my freshman year I dressed in drag.”

VCU Confessions allows students to air their grievances or simply confess something to the student body anonymously, including what they have done in the past or what they think of the other students. Other schools, like U.Va., have similar confessions pages dedicated to their students.

The page is not run by students of VCU, but by students of another local school, who asked to not be identified by name. Most schools’ confessions pages are run by this same group of people.

One of the page owners said that they will eventually be taking on representatives for each of the college confessions pages to deal with the number of confessions submitted each day. The number of confessions varies between each school, but the page owners said that the average is 200 submissions each day for each school.

The VCU Confessions Facebook page has 500 confessions posted, but one owner of the page, who asked to remain anonymous, said that only the entertaining confessions are posted.

“There are simply too many submissions for us to post without spamming all our pages across the country,” the owner said via email. “The best alternative to this is to pick and choose the best posts, preferably ones with more content that are almost as long as a short story.”

There are rules to what will be posted on the page. No names can be included in a confession for it to be posted to the site, which includes student’s and professor’s names. The owners of the site will also not post threats or stories that are “too good to be true.”

“We post real confessions and nothing fabricated. If it’s something directed towards someone we won’t even bother posting it,” said the owner of the site. “All confessions are welcome, but the ones that are fabricated we simply do not use. … Besides that, students can post crazy stories about times at VCU.”

The page has drawn some negative attention for the confessions posted. Students have argued in the comments sections on certain confessions, often about a confession’s offensive nature. Although the VCU confessions site owner says that roommate issues are the most common confessions received, the confessions concerning sexuality and race do receive more attention.

“I wouldn’t say we are trying to ‘gain’ attention by allowing arguments to happen. We would like users to give responses to the confessions and input, but it is a hotspot for people to argue, of course. We monitor it closely,” the VCU confessions site owner said. “I believe VCU has a very strong community and the interaction and feedback is great especially (in) controversial arguments.”

The owner of the page said the page was meant to foster a community-like feeling among VCU students.

“The page was started to help students interact and be on a more personal level by talking about stories,” the owner said. “I don’t think this reflects much on VCU as in academically, but each confession page shows real stories that happen at their school and that’s what students would like to see.”