The site known for its anonymous and often inflammatory posts has seen almost three times as many visitors, proportionally, since its relaunch on Sept. 20, according to Columbia University alumnus Jonathan Pappas. The site was originally launched in 2006, but later taken offline in October 2007 after Pappas said he tried to redirect posting to a newer version of the site that never became popular.
BoredatBaker is designed to allow students to anonymously discuss issues and ideas they feel are important, Pappas said.
The most common topics of discussion are related to the Greek system or are sexual in nature, according to the site's Week's Best, Week's Worst and News Worthy functions. Posts on the site often refer to individuals by name.
The site averages a few thousand posts a day with 2,185 posts on Oct. 17, 3,941 posts on Oct. 16 and 5,394 posts on Oct. 15 and currently totals over 21,000 posts.
Student Body President Frances Vernon '10 said approximately 25 to 30 students have contacted her about the site since its relaunch.
"I've received quite a few e-mails from students concerned about the site, both about what was being said about students and their peers and friends, as well as the kind of the message the site portrays to people outside of our community," Vernon said.
Spears said she visited the site when it was first brought to her attention last week and was concerned to see that many posts were offensive and did not represent Dartmouth well.
"I would hope that before [students] post with the anonymity blanket wrapped around them, they also recognize that words are so, so powerful," Spears said. "They can either help and uplift people or really hurt people. I think we can do better than that."
When BoredatBaker was originally introduced in 2006, personal attacks against students became "serious issues for some people," Vernon said.
Pappas said he did not intend to create a gossip site, but that Dartmouth's culture "may turn it into that." Posts referring to individuals by name are more prevalent on BoredatBaker than on other iterations of the site aimed at students at Dartmouth's peer institutions, Pappas said.
Pappas advised Dartmouth students to use the site respectfully.
"If you don't want people talking about you, then don't talk about other people," Pappas said. "If you've got something on your mind and you want to get an opinion about it, that's what you go to BoredatBaker for. If you have a question, if you have a concern, if you want some advice but I would not say that I built the site to allow people to step on toes."
The Bored-At trend began in February 2006 when Pappas, then a senior at Columbia, created BoredatButler.com, an anonymous message board for Columbia students named after the school's Butler Library. Pappas received requests for similar sites from students at the other Ivy League institutions, as well as Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, after a popular Ivy League blog wrote about BoredatButler.com.
Pappas said he created the original site in two hours after observing his fellow students surf Myspace.com and Facebook.com while sitting in Butler Library.
"My original idea was, These sites are great, but you can't really say what you want to say or what you want to express without having your true identity attached to it," Pappas said.
Pappas, who pays $10 a year for the site's domain and programs the site "as a hobby," said he does not generate any revenue from BoredatBaker.
While students certainly have the right to free speech, Spears said, they should consider how their negative posting could hurt students personally and undermine the sense of community that she said is so prevalent on campus.
"I think we can be a better and stronger community if we work to really treat each other with courage and consideration, and sometimes the courage not to engage in negative things," Spears said.
Several students interviewed by The Dartmouth said they believe BoredatBaker provides students with a healthy forum for speaking their minds.
"People are just so cautious socially here that they almost explode on the web site," Johanna Hamilton '10 said. "Whether [posts are] good or bad, I feel like it's healthy for people to say what they want to say without being judged."
Other students disagreed, calling the site childish and said it should be taken off the Internet. Matt Stumpf '12 said that although he was not offended by what has been written about him on the site, BoredatBaker should be shut down.
"It's a forum for hateful and immature stupidity," Stumpf said. "I don't think it's the administration's prerogative to do something about it, but the creator of site should do us all a service and shut it down."
At the height of the Bored-at sites' popularity in 2007, there were over 400 sites in existence, with a total of 1.7 million posts, Pappas said. When BoredatBaker was originally introduced, The Dartmouth reported that the site accumulated over 79,000 posts between October 2006 and March 2007.
Since then, Pappas has discontinued all but three of the Bored-at sites, leaving only BoredatBaker, the original BoredatButler at Columbia and BoredatLamont at Harvard University.
BoredatBaker is by far the most active of the three sites, Pappas said.
"Every school has a different flavor, every school has a different culture, different priorities, so there's definitely a different tone between schools," Pappas said. "Right now since it's rush, there's going to be a lot of sorority, fraternity-related content [on BoredatBaker]."
BoredatBaker's popularity on Dartmouth's campus is probably related to campus culture and size, Hamilton said.
"It's pretty symbolic of how we're in such an isolated space where everyone knows everyone's business," Hamilton said. "People can even just write a first name, and other people know who's being written about."
Pappas only checks the site once or twice a week, but said he is planning to eventually improve some aspects of the site's functions. The site currently allows users to collectively send a post to the site's trash if five people delete the post, Pappas said.
Pappas said he will try to rework the trash function so that the number of trash "clicks" required is proportional to the number of people using the site at any given time.
"I do have some small plans to improve the back-end business logic of it," Pappas said. "Making the voting system a little bit better, to allow it to self-moderate. That's the goal, to build a back end that will allow the site to exist and have all the content democratically moderated."
