College students love Sidechat. Colleges, not so much.

USA TODAY

Zachary Schermele

March 7, 2024

College students love social media. But one app especially strikes their fancy. It’s called Sidechat and it lets them gossip anonymously about all the latest campus drama. All they have to do is fork over their school email address.

Colleges, on the other hand, don’t love Sidechat so much. And members of Congress are increasingly alarmed by its content.

A sort of virtual quad where college students across the country sound off on just about everything, Sidechat has played a central role in the House education committee’s ongoing probes into antisemitism at a handful of schools, including the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University in New York City.

Last month, when the committee slapped Harvard with a subpoena – the first time the legislative body has issued such a demand to a university – Sidechat played a big role in that request. Lawmakers ordered the college to round up antisemitic posts on the social media platform.

Administrators at Harvard and leaders at the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish anti-hate organization, sat down separately with the executives from Sidechat in recent months, urging the company to crack down on hateful content as college campuses nationwide devolved into turmoil over the Israel-Hamas war.

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