On Sunday evening, Creighton Students Union’s executive team issued an open letter to the Creighton community through their social media accounts and Creighton’s website addressing the growing issue of negative comments on the social media app Yik Yak.
Stating that the negative comments contradict the philosophy of a Jesuit education, the letter strongly suggests that students “cease using the Yik Yak app and immediately delete it from their phones.”
The Rev. John Simonds, S.J., the director of secondary education and an associate professor of education at Creighton, summarized the letter in stating that “the environment [at Creighton] is getting unfriendly to certain people and groups and we would like to change that.”
According to John McCoy, the president of Creighton Students Union (CSU), the letter was issued after he received emails regarding the app from alumni who came back into town and after several organizations and individuals had mentioned to him that they had become targets of negative comments on Yik Yak.
To McCoy, the issue at hand is an issue of culture. He noted that the negative comments on Yik Yak regarding both individuals and student organizations affect both current and prospective members of the student body.
“Our big goal is looking at the culture on campus that’s allowing this cyber hate to exist,” he said.
He also noted that it is CSU’s job to make sure every individual and organization feels that they belong and are an integral part of the Creighton community.
“It’s all about [CSU] making sure the student experience is a positive one,” he said.
In order to do so, the executive team of CSU hopes to work within CSU as well as with other organizations such as the Inter Residence Hall Government (IRHG), Greek organizations and the Division of Student Life to “make this a university-wide issue rather than just a CSU issue.”
McCoy stated that this open letter is not a call to stop using Yik Yak completely.
“We’re not saying ‘stop using it,’ but ‘stop using it in a negative manner,’” McCoy said.
According to Ryan Cameron, the Director of the Division of Information Technology (DoIT), colleges and universities have used Yik Yak for two years now.
“It is designed to be an anonymous sounding board where you can put comments out there and basically complain about anything and everything,” he said.
In a Huffington Post article written in March, one of the app’s creators, Brooks Buffington, describes why the anonymity is so important in this app.
“Anonymity is a major feature because that guy in the back row of your science class might be the funniest guy you never know,” he said.
Yik Yak does allow its users to flag and report certain posts to create a more positive feed. It also monitors users who call individuals out by name. If a certain user does this more than once, he or she could be blocked from the application altogether.
Although this system is in place, Cameron understands that further actions may need to be taken by the university.
“If there are mechanisms in place and if [Yik Yak is] deemed something that is not supportive of the Creighton mission, DoIT will make every effort to make sure that campus resources won’t be directed to something that’s negative and derogatory,” he said.
Dr. Tanya Winegard, the Vice Provost for Student Life, pointed out that only the users of the app create the negativity.
“To me Yik Yak is a tool, it’s how we choose to use it,” she said. “It’s not an inherently bad tool, it’s how we use it in our community and that choice is up to us.”
Cameron also chooses to focus on the potentially positive effect Yik Yak could have at Creighton.
“I think in some ways it represents a tremendous opportunity for Creighton to show our spirit and our mission and who we are and get a positive message out there, and how we approach that is going to be up to us,” he said.