Students Create Anonymous App to Foster Campus Discussion

UPDATED: February 11, 2016, at 11:15 a.m.

On the heels of a semester filled with rigorous debate over divisive campus issues, two undergraduates recently released an app with the goal of creating a virtual and open space for discussion.

The app, called Campfire, is intended to create an open environment for conversation on Harvard’s campus. Jeffrey Zhao ’16, one of two co-creators of the app, said that they gave the app its name because campfires are “a sort of meeting point, a great social point for the community.”

Karine Hsu ’16, the other co-creator, said she believed the online forum would increase student participation in campus-wide discussions, from conversations about courses, to the recently released sexual assault report and the black lives matter protests.

“There were a lot of disparate places that people were talking about things,” Hsu said. “A lot of Facebook statuses, a lot of Crimson op-eds that people were writing, but no one was really responding to them. People were kind of just re-posting them and that was the end of the discussion.”

Though chiefly an anonymous app, Campfire does allow its users to create usernames that can contain their actual names. Aashay A. Sanghvi ’19, a frequent user of the app, said that this feature is especially useful for users who might want to engage in a conversation on a sensitive topic without having their comments attributed to them.

“With Yik Yak, it’s just a post that’s sort of free and out there, there’s no sense of accountability,” Sanghvi said, referencing an app prominent on college campuses that allows users to anonymously publish short and oftentimes irreverent posts.

Joe W. Kahn ’18, another Campfire user, said he believes the anonymity feature has so far been successful.

“Forums struggle with anonymity, and that allows people to really act out. It’s the basis of trolling culture, which hasn’t manifested itself yet in Campfire,” he said.

In addition to allowing open discussion on campus topics, the site also hosts a series of “Ask Me Anything” sessions when users can submit questions for guest panelists from industries like finance and consulting.

“We have a few recent grads that work at Facebook and Dropbox that will just answer questions that people have,” Hsu said, referencing tomorrow's discussion.

Since its launch at the start of the spring semester as a part of a Harvard i-Lab event, the site has garnered over 800 users—all Harvard undergraduates, Hsu said. Zhao and Hsu said they intend to expand the app to MIT within the coming months.

—Staff writer Brandon J. Dixon can be reached at brandon.dixon@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @BrandonJoDixon.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction

CORRECTION: February 11, 2016

A previous version of this article misstated the class year of Karine Hsu and the last name of Jeffrey Zhao.