By Lana Lagomarsini, News Staff

By the fall semester, Facebook may not be the only website members of the Northeastern community can use to connect to other students.
A new website, neustudents.org, will soon allow Northeastern students to interact with other members of the community.’ The site was inspired by the lack of student opinions on the Internet about Northeastern, said creator Nathan Heaps, an incoming freshman who plans to major in computer science.
‘When I was applying [to Northeastern] I found it kind of hard to get information from other Northeastern students,’ Heaps said.
‘ Heaps was webmaster for his youth group while in high school in his hometown of New Rochelle, N.Y., and is self-taught in website design, he said. He said he decided to start building the site during the summer, even though he hasn’t come to school yet, because it made sense to debut it at the beginning of the year. He also has more time to design and work on the site while he isn’t in classes.
Heaps said he envisions the site, which is set to launch at the beginning of the fall semester, as a communal site for the Northeastern community. He said he hopes it will act as a message board for the school, where students can voice their concerns liberally.
‘Hopefully [the site will be] a central place where students can socialize or talk about certain issues on campus,’ Heaps said.
The site will be open to anyone in the community with a Northeastern e-mail address, including’ administrators. To keep the site from going the way of other gossip-based sites like JuicyCampus, which eventually closed after failing to make advertising money, Heaps said he plans to have friends from his hometown to help him moderate the site.
‘I want simple rules such as not being mean and not posting illegal things,’ Heaps said. ‘However, the site is not responsible for what is put on it because the postings will be user generated.’
Incoming freshman and international affairs major John Hubbard said he believes the idea for a website would be beneficial, but doesn’t know if he would take the time out to register or post issues on the website. Although Hubbard did not try to find student resources while applying to Northeastern, he believes that the website has the possibility to connect students to teachers.
‘I’m sure some teachers would find it [the site] a bit entertaining,’ Hubbard said. ‘Some might take offense.’
The site is to be mostly self-sufficient, from the postings to the funding. Heaps estimates his costs to be around $10 a year and plans to keep advertising off the site, but is open to the idea of using advertisements from school organizations if he needs the extra finances.
Although the site only has four registered users so far, Heaps said he is optimistic for the future of the site once it is fully launched, and for his future as a student at Northeastern.
‘I’m excited to come to Northeastern,’ he said.
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