The new website eduHookups.com allows college students from select universities to place personal ads looking for casual sexual encounters.

Although the website offers a place for students looking for serious relationships as well, that is hardly why it has received so much media attention or what the majority of posts are about.

The site, which was originally designed by University of Chicago students exclusively for that student body, has expanded to include Northwestern University and Columbia College Chicago among others, according to a recent Chicago Tribune article.

While it is unknown whether the site will expand to include NIU in its growing list of schools, I, for one, hope that it does not.

First, this kind of website is unnecessary here. We’re in college; it’s not hard to find people to hook up with if that’s all you’re looking for.

“What’s the point of making a site about it when you can just go and do it?” asked freshman history major Angela Kuehn. This is a pretty valid point. I mean, really, do they not have any bars or frat parties at these schools?

It is true that the website would do for sexual encounters what Facebook did for friendships, but that’s not really a good thing.

Some things don’t need to be made any easier. Every form of social interaction should not be made available on the Internet. People still need to interact for some things.

Also, this site shouldn’t be opened to NIU students because it has the potential to create so many serious risks to the users. While the creators of the website tried to make it safe, it is impossible to eliminate all of the dangers.

In order to register and post on the website, students are required to have an .edu email address. Also, there are a number of safety tips listed under the FAQ section.

This prevents some dangers, but do the people that use the site really feel safe with it? At least one member does not.

A post from March 21, under the category “women4men,” was titled, “kill my time (but not me, please).”

Non-members are not allowed to view full posts on the site, so it is unclear if this is meant to be some kind of sick joke or not; either way, this post is not exactly an endorsement of the safety felt by the website’s members.

Sophomore history major Thomas Fowell said that he wouldn’t use this site if it were available to NIU students because of those hazards.

“I don’t trust a website like that,” Fowell said. “It’s really creepy and I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

That’s just it. It’s creepy.

It’s already pretty weird and dangerous to meet people online, but meeting people online specifically for sex makes it so much creepier and even more dangerous.

It’s impossible to know whether the person on the other end is actually who they say they are. Just limiting the members to only college students with .edu email addresses wouldn’t even help that much when you consider just how many people take classes or work at a school of this size.

There are enough creeps and predators out there already and they don’t need a website that could make it easier for them to find unsuspecting students.

The risks for NIU students would be high and unnecessary, so eduHookups should just stay closed to NIU.