Good Vibes Only
By Livey Beha ‘18
During the process of choosing a college, I created a long checklist of all the things I was looking for in a school. Unsurprisingly, USC topped the list for its bike-friendliness, 24-hour access to coffee, beautiful libraries, solid infrastructure for alumni and business networking, but most of all indefinable requirement that sat on the bottom of the list: “VIBE”. For a long time, I thought USC was special because there were people here who were similar to me, who approached and interacted with the world in the same way that I did. But in coming here, I realized what makes USC’s “vibe” unique is its diversity. A diverse institution allows for a vast array of varying perspectives to engage in intellectual, sometimes controversial, discussion.
Sometimes this discussion can crop up in forums you’d never expect, like the anonymous social media app, Yik Yak. In many respects, Yik Yak is a way to quantify the “vibe” on campus. Trojans upvote posts that resonate with them, like tales of woe from the all-nighter at Leavey or the celebratory FUCLA posts this weekend’s big win. But sometimes, the vibe on Yik Yak is not as friendly or as welcoming as the vibe on campus appears to be. Sometimes there will be hundreds of upvotes on posts that make fun or criticize other people for their identities and experiences. These types of posts are usually comments that would never be appropriate in a classroom setting, or even just said aloud in the company of a diverse set of students.
Last semester, many of my friends began to delete Yik Yak from their phones because they felt racism and sexism were so prevalent on the app, they no longer felt comfortable using it. But this concerned me: if Yik Yak is representative of the campus “vibe”, then why were so many posts alienating parts of our student body? The anonymity of these sentiments indicated to me that 1. People have opinions they know are controversial or offensive, and would rather voice them in a forum that requires no accountability, 2. Because these opinions are not being shared or addressed publicly, they are instead manifested in the way people treat one another on campus, especially in the rates of gender-based violence happening within our community.
This year, in partnership with the Center for Women and Men at USC, my project “Take Back the Yak”, seeks to serve as an open dialogue about our campus culture. Over the remainder of this semester, and the beginning of the next, I will be holding interviews with students, asking their opinions on Yik Yak and its problematic posts, giving a face and a voice to those who Yak and those who are Yakked about. All students can join the discussion by visiting the Center for Women and Men’s Facebook page.
I believe our anonymous words, and the intentions behind them, are powerful. In making “Take Back the Yak,” I hope to show the effects our words and our attitudes have in fostering the campus climate- our ability to remain open and accepting of the different perspectives and backgrounds in our student body decides the vibes on our campus, and I don’t know about you, but I’m going for good vibes only.
