“Yik Yak has the potential to be a great place where people can celebrate what goes on on campus, celebrate relevant things and unleash the absolute worst of what they have in their souls,” said Associate Professor Jeff Inman, who teaches a class in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications surrounding social media strategies.
Yik Yak is a social media site where college students can make posts specific to their own school. Only Drake students with verified .edu emails can access Drake’s Yik Yak page and post on it, remaining anonymous as they do so — but anonymity can have a cost.
It was due to Yik Yak’s controversial nature, which resulted in rampant bullying and racism, that the site was originally shut down in 2017 before being relaunched in 2021.
After the assassination of political commentator Charlie Kirk in September 2025, Drake College Republicans hosted a vigil in his honor on Sept. 11. Students began voicing their opinions about the vigil on Yik Yak. The discourse soon turned hostile and was brought to the attention of Drake’s vice president and dean of students, Jerry Parker.
“Over the past few days, I have heard about and seen screenshots of the bullying, trolling, and vitriol appearing on a certain anonymous social media site,” Parker said in an email on Sept. 12. “Quite frankly, I’m extremely disappointed and tired of it. This behavior works against everything we strive for in building community at Drake. We are better than this.”
Yik Yak can serve a role in keeping students informed, said first-year Mary Grogan.
“If something’s going on around campus, if you hear sirens, you go on Yik Yak and you’re like ‘Okay, so that’s what just happened,’” Grogan said.
Certain posts can go beyond spreading information and instead focus on specific individuals, which is when a student is being “Yik Yak’d” about.
“If it is you being posted [about], I feel like that can really impact your mental health,” said Grogan. “I think that can really, really do more harm than good.”
The site is also home to “Yik Yak celebrities” — students who, under a fictitious character, either post or get posted about more often than usual. Some of them fuel the site’s already rampant negativity, such as “Gossip Girl, who nobody really likes,” said Grogan.
But others use their reach to spread positivity, such as third-year John Ching, known on Yik Yak as “Lasso Man.” Ching is known for roping a wooden bull he constructed, named Alfonzo, with many posts on Yik Yak lightheartedly mentioning these roping sessions.
Ching believes these interactions show the positive side of Yik Yak and are proof that the site can be beneficial to students.
“I would say that people may read into things more than the actual intent of a post, however this is the nature for any social media,” said Ching. “… For Drake’s use of Yik Yak, there seems to be more positive interactions than negative ones.”
Inman said that Yik Yak allows for “screaming to a small group,” which can have advantages.
“Even evil tools have goodness in them,” Inman said.
