If you are part of an active
student community online, then you probably have already come across a
‘Confessions’ facebook page for your faculty or department. And if you
haven’t, then don’t worry, somebody in your department or faculty is
probably already thinking of setting one up.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, a
Confessions facebook page is the latest internet fad gripping colleges
and universities all over India. It’s a facebook page where people can
confess their feelings for others anonymously. The anonymity comes from a
Google form that can record your confession anonymously. The
administrator of the confessions page then takes those confessions, vets
them, and publishes them on the confessions facebook page for everybody
to read.
Screen grab of ‘JMI – Faculty of Engineering and Technology Confessions’ facebook page; March 15, 2013.
The trend seems to have started at
Oxford University only a few months ago. The founding date on the Oxford
confessions page is November, 2012. But it seems the fad really picked
up when American universities got into the action. Stanford, Harvard,
MIT all have their confessions page. And it wasn’t long then for Indian
colleges and universities to get onto the band wagon. Almost every
notable university and college in India now has one; and Jamia is no
exception.
In the past few weeks, students of
several faculty and departments at Jamia have created their confessions
page on facebook. It is not certain which faculty or department was the
first one to create a confessions page at Jamia, but what we are certain
of is that students of Faculty of Engineering were among the earliest,
and seem to have the most popular confessions page in Jamia.
The founding date for their confessions page is Feb. 27th, and in about two weeks their page have garnered over 700 ‘Likes’ and have close to a 1000 confessions.
A typical confession on this page can read something like this:
“i like a girl from architecture , i dnt
knw her name or nethng abt her .I use to watch her daily in our canteen
, today she was in yellow sleeveless top and blue jeans . Please only
once i want to interact with u then u can decide on your own whether u
want to date me or not .If u r reading this and also want to meet me
then pls rply to me here or anonymously . If sm1 else know abt her
please tell me her name i will b oblidge to u ppl .she z architecture.
#male”
Although a typical confession might be a
confession of love, which was the purported idea behind such a page,
confessions however, are not restricted to confessions of love. Students
are saying all sorts of stuff that they normally would not say with
their identities known.
Take this one for instance:
“Dear Hostel waalo’n aur batla house ke tuchchey chichhoro’n
College mein INSAAN banker aaya karo
I mean, shakal dhoker, subah uth’ker kapdey change karker (naaki wahi
pehanker jismein raat ko soye they) aur haaan, most important, SHOES
pehanker, not in ghinauni CHAPPALS
Tumhari wajah se JMI ka naam badnaaam hai chichhhoro’n !
Apni nahi, to humari to socho ! #female”
