Before you read this article, which discusses the issues surrounding the notorious Internet gossip forum JuicyCampus.com, I must beg of you one favor:Do not visit the Web site.

It's tempting. The site divulges all of the behind-the-scenes activities of campus social life. You can find the best party spots, the easiest girls and the most absurd rumors. Some of the information is true. Most of it is concocted by bored first-years. Either way, information is there, often posing potential harm to students. And I promise that your lives will undoubtedly continue without a visit to this notorious Web page.

As much as this seems like a high school-age endeavor, a 1995 Duke graduate created this Web site, where students can discuss, at length, such vulgar topics on their individual college's page with the comfort of total anonymity. As long as visitors to the site confirm that they are 18 years old, they are free to explore the often fabricated and mean-spirited gossip that abounds on JuicyCampus.

And posts get read. For example, approximately 2,300 views have accumulated under one single discussion topic debating the reputations of various female Brandeis students that was started on Oct. 21 on Brandeis' page. Posts on JuicyCampus are explicit and merciless. They target our classmates by full name and often divulge more information than one would deem appropriate for public knowledge.

But since JuicyCampus guarantees the anonymity of its posts' authors, students slam their classmates' reputations without thinking twice. Thought you left this nonsense behind when you graduated high school?

Well, you thought wrong. JuicyCampus and its defenders successfully rebutt your criticisms with that quintessential university value: free speech.

The International Herald Tribune conducted an interview with Michael Fertik, a graduate of Harvard Law School and the founder of reputationdefender.com, a service that helps clients remove defamatory material about themselves from the Internet. "Legally, JuicyCampus is fully, absolutely immune, no matter what it runs on its site from users, just like AOL is not responsible for nasty comments in its AOL chat rooms," said Fertik. Fertik explained that while victims could sue individual posters for libelous or defamatory remarks, the Communications Decency Act of 1996 protects the Web site's owner from lawsuit. And finding those individuals responsible for particularly vulgar posts is nearly impossible.

It's important to question whether our First Amendment rights should trump our morality. We've fought for these rights, and we value them, but where do we draw the line?

At this time in our lives, we encroach upon the gate to the "real world." Real jobs and real reputations are at stake. JuicyCampus contains information about students' sexual history, drug habits and other illicit and immoral activity. Students are justifiably paranoid about their names being published.

A recently posted story concerning some illicit activity by members the first-year class sparked significant anger when one student's name and room number were published on the Web site. Although most of the posts responding to the initial discussion about what really happened were not factual, the scene described and the information pertaining to this student were true.

The student contacted JuicyCampus to argue for the removal of the name from the site, fearing a tarnished reputation and the possible loss of the scholarship Brandeis had granted her. After several days, JuicyCampus responded affirmatively and erased the post. However, the student reported that the Web site was not easy to work with.

"I looked at their information about how to remove stuff. Unless [a post] threatens someone's safety, is a proven, illegal lie or includes your personal address, e-mail or phone number, you have to go through a whole process," this student said. "They say you shouldn't write lies because that's libel, and that's illegal, but then they don't do anything about it. Even if people do lie, [the victims] aren't protected, and then it is still libel."

The student further pointed out that at JuicyCampus, "they only think about personal safety. They don't think about emotional safety. People can just use it to their own benefit and don't really think about how much it could damage other people, even if it is just a silly Web site."

Perhaps we should take a moment to assess the goals we had when we entered this institution of higher learning. Four years of schooling have potential to enrich our understanding of how we should structure the society we live in.

Although college students created JuicyCampus, the Web site does not embody the goals and needs of students within a university setting. Free speech should not be taken for granted. In a society in which this right is considered an absolute, we must consider its limitations. We are obliged to curb free speech for the sake of our classmates' emotional well-being. Four years of college grant us the opportunity to take advantage of the various media that advance this right. We don't need to take it out on our peers.

As college students who claim to positively influence our society, we should encourage free speech. But not in this twisted, libelous manner. Channel your first amendment right into a more productive form, not the profane gossip forums of JuicyCampus.