College lodges complaint with Cyber Crime Cell over abusive FB confessions page

The confession page is indeed the newest viral idea on Facebook, but for the Fort-based Government Dental College, things took a rather ugly turn. It was recently brought to the college dean’s notice that the “GDC Mumbai Confessions” page housed some obscene comments on the institute’s female students. Following a meeting in the college with the teaching staff, student representative, among others, the dean, Dr Mansing Pawar lodged a complaint with Mumbai Police’s Cyber Crime Cell.

The post uploaded by Dr Pawar on Facebook

On Thursday, in light of the event, Dr Pawar even posted on the institute’s official Facebook page. It reads,

“To Whomsoever it may concern,

Dean, Government Dental College; Teaching staff; Non-teaching staff and Student representative have unanimously decided to lodge a official complaint to the DCP, Cyber Crime, Mumbai Police against the person whoever has started and is controlling the Facebook Page called "GDC Mumbai Confessions" in the larger interest of individuals especially girls and boys students. 

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We hereby also appeal to the administrator responsible for this should close down the above mentioned web page immediately on his own.”

Dr Pawar’s post on Facebook received comments from both, the faculty as well as the students. One of the commenters showed his displeasure at the situation, where students spoke about their teachers in a disrespectful language and backed the dean’s move.

We attempted to contact the police, but no one was available to comment or verify. We'll update this article with their statement soon.

The idea of such confession pages is a very simple one. You anonymously post a “confession” on a page and your peers react to it. These pages are generally based around a school, college or a similar educational institution where generations of students who have passed through the classes come together to post about incidences.

However, an important thing to note here is that abusive content is a strict no-no on these pages. Not just because the institution’s reputation is at stake, but also because Facebook has strict rules in place. The social networking giant regularly runs through pages to review content. Risking a page suspension is not something the admins want to play around with. Not even a few weeks old, some of these pages have "likes" running into thousands. Delhi Public School’s confession page has already racked up a staggering 7,000 likes in just under a month.