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On August 28th, a new CyberDrama was released to the Internet community. It's title is "The University Center", and it is brought to you by David Sobel, a senior Computer Science major at the College of William & Mary. It's URL is http://cs.wm.edu/~dpsobe/uc/ The University Center is a cross of MTV's "The Real World" with American Cybercast's "The Spot". The University Center chronicles the lives of 7 William & Mary students from the first day of classes for the Fall 1996 semester until graduation day in May of 1997. Everything discussed on the University Center will be real life drama -- nothing is scripted. "There is plenty of drama all around us, especially on a college campus. We want to see what happens when you take a group of friends and track their lives. Then, what happens when we add the audience? Will their communications change the events going on here? It's going to be interesting to watch." said Dave Sobel, who is the creator and coordinator of the online project. The project will use a series of aliases to change the names of the participants. However, only the names will be changed. "We want to protect the innocent, and be careful not to destroy friendships or hurt those not participating in the project." Sobel said. The project will concentrate on story telling and quality interaction, rather than graphics. "To protect the participants, I'm staying away from a large number of pictures of people, and working more with the text itself, and not pictures. I will be putting pictures of locations and such in, I just want to be careful to respect the anonymity of those in this project." Readers on the Internet can participate in the participants lives by E-Mailing them at accounts set up for the project, or an interactive discussion area which is public to everyone. Readers can interact with one another and with the 7 students writing journals. The University Center is named after the social hub at William & Mary, the building of the same name. The project includes features like "A Student's Guide to William & Mary" and a response by the student participants to a recent Allure Magazine article. The first diary entry was posted on the first day of classes, August 28th, 1996. One new entry is available each day. The project has now been slated to run into a Season 2, with the one underclass woman who currently participates continuing, and a new additional set of participants being asked to join. Those graduating this year will also be given the option of "guest posting" so that their story will continue after graduation. To contact Dave Sobel:
E-Mail: dpsobe@cs.wm.edu
Disclaimer: David Sobel, The University Center, and The College of William and Mary are in no way affiliated with MTV, The Real World, American Cybercast, The Spot, LightSpeed Media, or GrapeJam. This project has in no way borrowed from any of these organizations, and simply has a format that is similar to those projects.
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dpsobe@cs.wm.edu