From the moment I came across College Anonymous Confession Board, I made it a personal goal to never revisit the site.From one malicious post questioning an individual's sexual orientation to another asking all readers to comment on the ugliest, prettiest and most sexually promiscuous girls on campus, I am truly disappointed and saddened that members of our student body are feeding into this abominable site that is fundamentally at odds with the values and beliefs of our university.

Taking private conversations into a public space, CollegeACB is a controversial online forum that allows individuals to anonymously post and discuss anything relevant to the students and the school. Brandeis, along with some of the most prestigious colleges in the country, has an active section on the website.

While the previous owner Peter Frank claims this site is a confession board where students can openly "share feelings and discuss sensitive topics in a sincere fashion," it is at most a trashy gossip website that has compiled hearsay and hate speech under one domain.

Frank, who just sold the website to an undisclosed buyer earlier this year, is a rising senior at Wesleyan University who took over the site from its original founders, college graduates Andy Mann and Aaron Larner.

The website was conceived in 2008 in time to fill the void of JuicyCampus, another gossip website, which was created by a Duke University graduate and shut down in 2009 due to financial problems.

In a 2009 interview with Time, college students described the content on CollegeACB as ranging from legitimately helpful posts asking for missed lecture notes to others salaciously discussing which freshman girl is most likely to give fellatio. While the creators of the site intended for real conversations about universities to take place that otherwise would not find a forum, the website has degenerated into an arena for students to slander other students without fear of retribution.

Though the website boasts on its front page that it's trying to move in a more positive direction with "productive content," the posts found on the Brandeis section of CollegeACB indicate the contrary. With their posts uninhibited by site moderators or morals and ethics, students relentlessly malign others for entertainment value. The social justice motif championed by this university is lost somewhere between a post ranking the "best ass" on campus and another rating the first-year class girls.

This is not what I expected of my university-one that strives for academic excellence above trivial and idle gossip. Under the veil of anonymity, these individuals engage in what is essentially cyberbullying. Without consideration of the emotional distress inflicted on the persons who they are disparaging, the posters engage in a virtual public stoning.

This disgusting display of the most primal and immature behavior undermines everything this university stands for: justice, inclusion and tolerance.

Perhaps in an ideal world the space would be used constructively. However, without a filter system or any accountability for destructive words, the positive, productive community Frank envisioned is woefully in ruins.

Even more disturbing, this information is available for anyone to view, regardless of which school they attend.

Professors, parents and even future employers can log on to the Brandeis section and see what individuals write about each other. I do not want my school to be represented by the words of the minority that posts on this site.

While anyone can request to remove a post, a deletion is not immediately guaranteed. It takes a few days to process the request and delete the post. We should really be working towards a more permanent solution.

This past April, nine sororities from Duke University collectively petitioned to have their school removed from CollegeACB, telling the school newspaper, "It has affected our chapters on a collective level. It fuels a social hierarchy that leads to competitiveness between our sororities." Cornell University, Drew University and Tulane University are taking similar steps to eradicate their schools' affiliations with the website.

School administrators are seeing the serious impact the site is having on students, creating an environment of hostility and hate-the antithesis of a college community. The ridicule sophomore Sage Burke-Cabados endured on the site was so terrible he ended up transferring from Oakland University in Michigan to Central Michigan University. Similarly, a freshman at Drew University was understandably upset to be called one the "fattest people on campus." She went as far as to employ the aid of the state attorney general to remove the post on the website.

For the purposes of writing this article, I had to revisit the website, understanding that I would-ironically-inadvertently garner the site a few more visits from curious readers.

I urge those familiar with the site and as outraged as I am to follow Duke's example to eliminate any interaction with the site.

Having scoured Brandeis' section in depth, read the cruel posts singling out individuals by name and questioned how the values of this school could possibly be represented on this forum,

I have personally lost respect for our student body.

As long as this site exists and is available to be viewed by anyone with access to the Internet, the integrity of our university and the reputation of our students will continue to be threatened.