News > September 27, 2007

By Elliot Engstrom | Asst. news editor

A new college networking site is kicking off at the university.

Seniors Thaddeus Rolle and Timothy Chilleri, both economics majors, have together begun college-nation.com, a networking site for college undergraduates that is based around the concept of the free flow of uncensored information, rather than detailed personal information.

“We are not focusing on personal information,” Rolle said. “We are focusing on shared interests and shared information. The key is information, not personal profiles.” The site was on the Web beginning Sept. 16.

“It’s an open forum for every undergraduate in the nation,” Rolle said. “There are national boards and local campus boards. Anyone can write in the national board and in their own individual school board.”

College-nation.com plans to raise the bar on college networking Web sites by incorporating unprecedented user privacy and security, while simultaneously allowing greater free flow of information than has previously been enjoyed.

Users must be undergraduates and have a valid .edu e-mail address to join, according the Web site’s terms and conditions. This means that anyone who is not a college undergraduate and using the Web site does so illegally.

Many students may wonder why they should use college-nation.com over current networking sites, like Facebook and Myspace.

“Facebook has become too selective within friendships,” Rolle said. “You are essentially limited by the amount of connections you can develop, whereas we are incorporating the whole undergraduate student body, and they can share anything they need to.”

“Clubs and organizations have access to the whole student body 24/7,” Rolle said. “Any activities they are doing they can post on their individual sites, but they can also post on college-nation.com, as they know that everyone has a central organization.”

The Web site’s design is based around message boards for each school that are individually tailored for the school they correspond to, along with a national message board for all students.

Students can write only on their own school’s board and on the national board.

They also can read forums from other schools but are unable to write in other schools’ forums.

“We designed it this way so that kids from different schools cannot influence the dynamic at other schools,” Rolle said.

“Within any school, someone can be identified through his e-mail address. However, when you visit another school’s message boards, you cannot see e-mail addresses but only user names. We’re trying to protect user privacy while maintaining the ability for the boards to be peer monitored.”

Wake Forest and Elon are the only schools with currently functioning boards on the Web site.

However, many other schools, including UNC-Chapel Hill, N.C. State University and Duke University will soon join them on the Web site.

“The first and primary reason we made this site is because it’s private,” Rolle said.

“There are faculty and staff on Facebook, whereas they are not on CollegeNation. Students can say anything without having to worry about university censorship and future job opportunities.”

Rolle feels that CollegeNation will fill a void where other college networking sites have come up short.

“There are Web sites where people can advertise things,” Rolle said, “but there is really no place on the internet that is completely student-driven and student-run. For example, a fraternity could post a party without having to worry about the administration finding out about it.”

In addition to the requirement of being an undergraduate to sign up for the site, students can no longer use the site once their graduation year has passed.

“We’re trying to protect user privacy,” Rolle said.