Story by ELLEN BECKER, managing editor – The UCM Confessions Facebook page quickly caught the attention of Warrensburg High School students, who decided to make a page of their own.
The WHS Confessions page is run by two students, a freshman girl and a sophomore boy. Both wish to remain anonymous.
The creator said that when students first discovered UCM Confessions, they became big fans.
“Our peers would come to school and talk about the amusing confessions they had read on the UCM Confessions page and sometimes we’d laugh so hard we’d cry,” he said. “So we thought that if we created a WHS Confessions page, it could potentially be just as successful as UCM’s.”
The WHS page currently has 268 “likes,” as compared to UCM’s more than 4,000. The creator said they had no expectations when starting the page.
“We weren’t sure if it would be a success or a huge catastrophe,” he said. “But we truly are satisfied with any amount of attention it gets, large or small.”
Students are able to confess their secrets anonymously through a Tumblr account. The confessions are then posted on the Facebook page.
The creator said the number of submissions varies daily.
“Some days we might get two and some days we might get 10,” he said. “But when we go through and pick out which confessions we’re going to post, we may only be able to post a few because of the content. We really wish we could post all of our submissions; we just don’t want to offend anyone.”
There is some concern that the confessions are inappropriate for high schoolers to be posting, as many posts are sexual in nature. The creator said he doesn’t see it as a problem.
“Yes, they’re weird and vulgar but that is what young people find humorous,” he said. “It’s the reality of what is going on and we can’t sugarcoat everything. Obviously we are young and we will do crazy and inappropriate things.”
Kye Denker, a junior at WHS, also said he doesn’t think the posts are inappropriate.
“It’s nothing worse than you hear everyday walking through the halls of WHS, and with TV, movies and music it’s no worse than all that.”
The creator said he monitors all submissions, because they tend to receive a lot of disrespectful and unnecessary comments about specific individuals.
“We don’t promote hateful behavior and we’d like to keep the mood on the page light for everyone’s enjoyment,” he said. “If anybody does happen to take offense to a specific post, we won’t hesitate to remove it.”
Both the UCM and WHS pages are a popular topic for the high school students.
There has even been feedback from surrounding high schools.
“Students from Crest Ridge and Knob Noster have both noticed the WHS Confessions page and commented about how they want a confessions page for their high school,” the creator said.
Neither Denker nor the page creators have heard any feedback from teachers.
“We can only hope it is because they don’t see it as a problem,” the creator said.
“I assume that at least some teachers know, but they don’t really care because it’s not hurtful to anyone directly,” Denker said.
WHS administrators have declined to comment about the page.