Lost your keys at Duke Day? Want to sell your book from that class on French Existentialism? Looking for a hot new date? Based on the popular website CraigsList, WesList.org offers students a forum in which to post on almost anything, from anonymous celebrity crushes to rides in and out of Middletown.
“I thought that some really useful and unique things could happen on a classified ads/forum site that is based around a college campus rather than a major metropolis,” said Lee Pender ’07, webmaster and creator of the site. “Music shows, keg parties, [and] political events could be advertised for, failed Wespeaks published, goods and services exchanged, keys found, etc. There’s a really incredible amount of stuff that you can do with a campus classified ads site like WesList.”
Pender also said that WesList is only “good” if a lot of people use it, and that it has continued to be unknown to much of the Wesleyan population since its launch on Feb. 22.
“I didn’t know that we had this website,” said Sara Perry ’06 after seeing the site for the first time. “It’s probably something that a lot of people don’t know about.”
“I like the bands things a lot, like the events that are going on on campus, but we have Facebook for that,” said Sabrina Perez ’08.
Although the site has been up for almost two months, only one person has posted under the “expression” section of the site, where students can post short stories, empty out their feelings on the “rant and rave” section, and make confessions in the vein of the Livejournal anonymous confession board. There is also a “drunk” category under the expression section that has yet to be utilized.
Pender said that he hoped people might use the Weslist as a “place where you can write a drunken rave every now and then.”
Many of the posters thus far have used the board as more of a forum for humor than as a medium for more serious discussions.
“[WesList is in] its beta stages, so it hasn’t been used for that much,” Pender said. “Mostly people just write something funny and post it.”
Many posts reflect the site’s beta stage, with users posting suggestions and fixes for the service.
The site currently has 43 members, including the webmaster, though non-users can post anonymously on the general, expression, and personals sections.
Perez expressed some confusion about this.
“’Anon’ is always posting stuff,” she said.
To post on the rest of the site, students must register by providing their Wesleyan username. An e-mail confirmation is then sent to the user’s e-mail address. Membership is restricted to people with Wesleyan e-mail addresses.
Though self-admittedly a Facebook addict and supporter, Perez feels that students will use the site more as a venue for self-expression than for practical purposes.
“I feel like people are going to use this more as a rant than as an actual thing for trading or whatever,” Perez said. “I feel bad for this person trying to get a ride, because she’s never, ever gonna get it.”
Pender, however, hopes that the website will eventually be used for more than that.
“Some people have posted personals ads—there is a gender neutral personals section, free things they are giving away, looking for housing, [and] lost keys,” Pender said. “In the future I hope that it becomes a forum for students to express themselves, and also to exchange goods and services, art, ideas, music, textbooks, etc.”
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