Cornell Students Catch Hell For Making ‘Hot Or Not’ Site For Cornell Sorority Girls
Some anonymous Cornell students have created a wildly popular website that is garnering its founders some serious criticism. Cornell Fetch is a website that is getting a ton of traffic. The concept: Look at side-by-side comparisons of Cornell sorority girls’ pictures, and then choose which ones are better-looking by voting on them. The as-of-now-anonymous founders told women’s site Jezebel in an interview that the site is a “social experiment” designed to uncover the unspoken-of hierarchy of women’s secret clubs on the Ithaca, New York campus. Jezebel’s Katie Baker asked the founders of Cornell Fetch why they are ranking only sorority girls and not fraternity guys. The Fetch founder told her the decision was totally arbitrary. Obviously the Cornell Fetch bros were not just going to come out and say it’s just for fun. By taking this angle that it’s for “social research” and to untangle the social constructs that fraternities and sororities create, Cornell Fetch basically gets away with what they’re doing.
Don’t these Ivy League types have better shit they could be doing? However, it’s interesting this site idea is catching so much flak from so many people about ethics and violating privacy, not to mention unapologetically objectifying women. After all, Zuckerberg’s Facebook started under near-identical conditions at Harvard. However, Harvard administrators shut it down. Look for this model of web site to take off at universities and colleges all over the U.S., if an angry mob of women doesn’t come after the John Does behind this idea. Then again, Zuckerberg’s Harvard Facebook came under scrutiny because Zuckerberg hacked into the databases of all the Harvard dorms to get pictures for the website. Where do the Cornell Fetch pictures come from? If they are submitted by every Cornell sorority girl, there should be no problem. However, if the people running the site are using girls’ Facebook pictures without any form of consent, there might be some problems here.
Pictures with the most votes get put on a “Top 10” list of Cornell girls. So, if you need 10 more reasons to never want to have a daughter, this is it. While the site got a million hits in its first three days of activity, it’s not clear how much “ballot box stuffing” is going on. There’s not a doubt in my mind that a lot of these sororities and fraternities are clearly up-voting their friends at the expense of others. Or, we are truly seeing that “social hierarchy” start to take shape and Alpha Phi has the hottest women at Cornell.
