St. Edward’s campus flirts with new site

“At photo lab: Male, Black hair. I am a new photo student, but i can tell you that i will be in the lab when you are the monitor. you are super cute! maybe something will develop between us.”

Such is the nature of posts found on likealittle.com/stedwards, a website dedicated to increasing the number of anonymous missed connections between St. Edward’s students.

However, visiting the site will show that most posts are of a caliber far more lewd than the one shown above. Originally created for the Stanford University campus, LikeALittle now has pages for colleges around the country. The St. Edward’s page went live last semester.

Currently, dozens of posts to the site for St. Edward’s are made every day.

The site operates as follows: a person either sees someone whom they find attractive on campus, has a friend they wish to play a trick on or wishes to publicly display their wildest fantasies for someone while preserving their anonymity. They go to the website, enter where they see the person and add a brief description and flirty message.

The post is then visible to all visitors of the website, who may comment on the post with their names replaced by fruit or vegetable names as aliases. If the person described sees the post and wishes to “connect” with the author, they can set up a meeting in a private message with no one else aware of their endeavors.

Some comment threads have actually developed into lengthy heated arguments over the individual described, with volatile language such as “You can’t have him,” and “Get a freakin’ clue, homewrecker.”

The website offers a search bar to browse various locations around campus so that visitors may look to see if descriptions of them have been written at places on campus where they are often present. This tool also makes it very easy to localize different individuals who work on campus, such as at Meadows Coffee shop or the Trustee labs. There are also many descriptions of a few resident assistants who work in the residence halls around campus.

Cory Hahn, a senior and an RA at the Dujarie Casitas, was very clearly described by a student in one recent post on the website. Hahn said he didn’t read too far into the comments, but enjoys the site for its entertainment value.

“I know it’s just someone playing a joke on me,” Hahn said. “I think it’s a pretty fun site; it’s a good way to track down a person you’ve maybe only seen from a distance. But you can’t take it as 100 percent genuine. I think that it’s mostly just good for a laugh.”

Junior Erica Stivison has a similar view of the newest form of anonymous social networking.

“It’s creepy but fun,” Stivison said. “I think it fits the feel of our campus.”