Editorial | Social media activism or ostracism?

Illustration by RUPALI INGLE, Illustrator

Everything comes with a price.

Last week, most every Chapman student’s Instagram feed was no doubt flooded with reposts from @chapmansuperspreaders and @chapman.party. Out of their own accord, students stupidly uploaded videos of them drinking and partying unmasked and unperturbed. In case you forgot, we are in the midst of a worldwide pandemic that’s now killed over 512,000 people in the United States. 

Furious debates ignited within the community over whether the accounts are justified, given that they were releasing the identity of students involved on a public scale, subjecting them to humiliation and possible harassment should a viewer choose to take such action. The administration even weighed in, with Dean of Students Jerry Price’s Feb. 24 email condemning both the partygoers’ disregard for safety regulations and the accounts for not reporting directly to the Office of Student Conduct. 

So was sharing the videos worth it? What is the morally justifiable answer to that question? 

Frankly, our staff was split just like the rest of you. We can’t take a harsh stance on this one way or another without some of us objecting. So we’ll lay out the arguments.

Say you were a student at one of these parties and went without wearing a mask or taking any kind of safety precautions like social distancing. Say you then proceeded to not quarantine for a few days before getting tested and interacted unsafely with someone who was not aware you were at that party. Now say that person you interacted with — a cashier at Urth Caffe, a sales associate at Warby Parker — develops asymptomatic symptoms of COVID-19 and visits an at-risk family member.  Congratulations: your actions may kill someone. Hosting or attending these parties without a sprinkle of care for others’ safety unquestionably demonstrates your stupendously horrendous morals. 

We get it; we’re college students too, and we’re just as tired of staying home or making our friend groups get tested at the Student Health Center before seeing each other. But these fraternity parties are on another disgusting level of privilege. Those pictured in the videos, acting without any regard to the devastation and trauma left by the pandemic, are largely white. If these individuals thought taking a test after partying would justify their behaviors, it doesn’t. If anything, it simply wastes resources and throws privilege in the face of BIPOC, Latinx and other minority communities who are proven to have less access to healthcare resources and are disproportionately affected by COVID-19. 

So perhaps it was good the accounts exposed the behavior of those partying. They may have lit a flame under the university to take accelerated or public action, encouraging students to anonymously report conduct violations. Additionally, Phi Delta Theta’s general headquarters suspended the Chapman chapter’s operations Feb. 22, while the university also suspended new member activity for both Phi Delta Theta and another Chapman fraternity that was not disclosed to The Panther. That’s progress. 

Yet at the same time, @chapmansuperspreaders and @chapman.party’s activity on social media is hardly moral in itself. 

Frequently, posts made by these accounts have taken a snide, satirical look at the videos, inserting captions such as “U claim this superspreader girly?” This snarky diction seems designed to rile up opposition and pave way for laughs rather than attempt to actually educate. It creates unnecessary drama and a “spilling the tea” approach to a situation that’s already dividing the student body with argumentative and hateful comments on social media. 

The accounts’ original intent to raise awareness around the dismissal of COVID-19 safety precautions appears to have contorted over time, as videos of large gatherings turned into videos targeting specific people and groups. Sharing the posts in an echo chamber that identifies names to ostracize and ridicule will not help change the minds and attitudes of those who — for some reason or another — cannot comprehend the damage of partying during a pandemic. 

Further, the university is a bureaucratic institution that sets its student conduct policies in accordance with laws like FERPA. Chapman University cannot publicly announce specific disciplinary actions taken against individual students, nor should they. Doing so would invade a student’s privacy and open themselves up to harassment counteractive to building a learning environment, or even limit a student’s transparency in coming forward with a future conduct complaint.

So instead of creating vindictive captions for posts that pit students at each other’s throats, report these videos and images to the Office of Student Conduct at conduct@chapman.edu or the Director of Student Conduct Colleen Wood at cwood@chapman.edu. Nothing but social ostracization and humiliation will come from these accounts — not real disciplinary measures. So shift the focus away from publicly sensationalizing these irresponsible students and instead utilize the built and proven reporting system Chapman has already set up. At the end of the day, only the administration is able to take action against these students.

We’ve reached the conclusion that neither party is morally justified in this mess. There’s a better way to go about this situation, from both standpoints. We as a Chapman community, can utilize our collective frustration toward large, reckless gatherings in a productive way by holding each other accountable and reporting conduct violations. But that shouldn’t lend itself to harassing, deriding and contributing to the already-prevalent toxicity that is social media.