The Value of Anonymity

Over the past couple of weeks, my alma mater has been embroiled in a bit of a conflict. It all began with a student-led protest aimed at bringing attention to sexual assault problems at the school. The protest happened during one of the school’s most popular admitted student programs. Reactions to the protest varied – some were supportive; others less so. Those who were angered by the protest and the protesters took to the school’s anonymous online discussion forum, which is restricted to those with valid school e-mail addresses. Within a matter of hours, the forum filled up with all forms of outrage – racial slurs, derogatory remarks towards the LGBT community, and even death threats. The website was temporarily disabled by the end of the day. Other than disgust, my immediate reaction was: who were these students? Whether these students are truly anonymous is a question I cannot answer without knowing more about the school’s system, but I have my doubts that they are. Surely, the school could match each anonymous pseudonym to an individual email account if it wanted to, but the question is should it? Despite its occurrence on a relatively isolated college campus, this incident implicates a much larger issue – the preservation of anonymity on the internet.