Yik Yak contiues to stir up controversy

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Students, faculty and President John deSteiguer took to the stage in Hardeman Auditorium during chapel Tuesday to show solidarity against a certain social media app creating rifts on campus.

“Posting comments, saying things, engaging in behavior that is targeted at others based on their race, their national origin, their gender – it’s not OK,” deSteiguer said to the chapel audience. “It is not OK to mistreat anyone who feels marginalized. It is not OK on this campus, it is not OK in the OC family and it is not OK for any follower of God.”

Yik Yak, banned last Friday from the Oklahoma Christian University Wi-Fi network, continues to stir-up controversy. The social media app allows users to anonymously share tweet-like messages within a 10-mile radius, and these anonymous posts have caught the attention of more than school administrators.

“There are a couple of posts on Yik Yak that we have turned over to the FBI,” Neil Arter, dean of Student Life, said. “We have not heard back yet whether the FBI sees them as credible threats and about what they’re going to do.”

While the app is advertised as a way for users to stay informed and create an area-wide conversation, users have twisted that directive. Under the veil of anonymity, several users posted inflammatory comments aimed in almost every direction.

“It was about race, some of it was about gender and some of it was just straight out bullying – someone who thought they could say something about someone else and be OK with that,” Arter said.

The app isn’t so new. It was released in November 2013 and achieved country-wide popularity six months later.

Arter said he was first made aware of the app in January, but it didn’t sweep the Oklahoma Christian campus until recently. Last week Arter met with other campus administrators to find the proper course of action on how to deal with the app.

Shutting off access through the campus Wi-Fi might not end the app’s effects, Arter said

“Maybe there are fewer posts but the problem is the pain that was caused by someone making derogatory or bullying comments about certain people on campus,” Arter said. “I don’t believe any of us have the right to make someone else feel less than they are.”

When senior Daniel Redding first heard about Yik Yak he said he saw the positive potential for it.

“My initial reaction was like, this is cool because it allows people to share what they think without fear of judgment directly on their person,” Redding said.

His positive views of the app quickly faded after he saw derogatory comments slung at individuals.

“With anything anonymous it becomes too easy to get into slandering people and talking bad about any group of people,” Redding said.

Senior Kayce Jones said she was angry when she heard about the inciting posts directed toward specific individuals and groups.

“I became completely against it after that,” Jones said. “I think it is ridiculous what people think they can get away with saying when they think nobody knows who they are. It makes me so mad, honestly.”

The access ban was met with positive feedback from many students.

“I think it was good they shut it down because there’s really no need for it,” Jones said. “There’s not really anything good that comes from it. It doesn’t need to be around. It just went too far.”

Oklahoma Christian isn’t the only school affected by the app. Because of anonymous threats of violence, the app alarmed many learning institutions across the country, from middle schools to large universities.

According to News Channel 4, the University of Central Oklahoma received two separate threats of on-campus violence through the app. In both cases the students who made the threat were found through location services and the IP addresses. Both students could face criminal charges.

“Nothing is private, people think that it is but it’s not,” Arter said. “I’m sure those two people at UCO thought no one would ever know. … And they were arrested and they’re probably going to go through more terror than they could have realized.”

Every action has a reaction, even in speech, Arter said.

“I believe that free speech was never intended for people to hide behind anonymity and to hurt other people,” Arter said. “For everything we say there’s a result, and sometimes it’s a positive result. Sometimes it’s a negative result. But either way we have to be responsible for what we say.”