Columbia CampusNetwork site comes to Penn

When Carrington Lee, a college senior at Columbia University, wanted to gather Southern belles to eat barbecue and drink sweet tea, she knew where to turn. And when Columbia College student Leslie Moore needed to vent her frustration with emoticons, all signs also pointed her in the same direction: Columbia's CampusNetwork, the university's student-run and student-used online community.

Starting today, CampusNetwork will give Penn students the chance to develop their own online community, which will include space for teacher reviews, journal Web logs, unlimited photo uploads and "the shelfbox" -- a community-wide, chat room-style discussion space.

CampusNetwork first hit the Internet in September 2003, around six months before thefacebook.com -- a site created by a Harvard University undergraduate -- which was introduced at Penn last spring.

Started by Columbia engineering junior Adam Goldberg in his spare time over the summer after freshman year, the site went up initially as just an online community for engineering students. Columbia College junior Wayne Ting, however, saw potential for a larger audience and convinced Goldberg to include both Columbia University and Barnard College in the site later that year.

"When you live in a big city, there is a lack of community on campus. ... People were complaining that there wasn't a way to come together and meet each other and share ideas," Ting said.

And that's how CampusNetwork took off.

"Beyond just meeting a face, ... it's about meeting a mind," he said, comparing CampusNetwork to the Facebook. It is about "taking browsing and friends to another step -- how do we have a substantive interaction?"

CampusNetwork took on that question and answered it so well that it soon found its way into the New York news. After a cartoon that ran in Columbia's campus newspaper created a controversy over its possible racial discriminatory implications, CampusNetwork's discussion groups surged as students ran to their online community to let their opinions be known. The New York Sun was so impressed by the volume of discussion that it ran a story featuring the growing popularity of the community forum.

And now CampusNetwork is bringing its dialogue across state borders and expanding in a national campaign to campuses around the United States. Penn is one the first stops on the journey.

Columbia users encourage Penn students to take advantage of CampusNetwork.

"Probably 70 percent of my friends are on CampusNetwork," Lee said. "It's a great way to keep people updated on what is going on with me."

"CampusNetwork is better than sites like the Facebook for a million reasons," Lee added. "It has so many more features and really manages to build a sense of community in an incredible way."

However, this is not to say that all Columbia students are enamored with the site.

"I have no idea what it is, and I don't think any of my friends use it," said Daniella Rotenberg, a Columbia College junior.

Penn students appear to have mixed reviews about the prospect of CampusNetwork's arrival.

Engineering freshman Avidan Ackerson said, "It looks a lot like a combination of the Facebook, Penn Course Review and a photo album. ... I don't see any reason to leave the Facebook, because all it does is combine a few things together that I already have."

College sophomore Liz Choca, on the other hand, is more hopeful.

"I think that it will be nice for students who are interested in that," she said.

Whatever the case, Ting and Goldberg are confident that their brainchild has much to offer Penn students.

"We think that there is something on the site that every student can enjoy," Goldberg said.

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