After the SENS-UAW Local 7902 strike in early March, the campus-specific social media app Fizz has become a central hub for students to anonymously vent their frustrations, experiences, and feelings about The New School experience.
Advertisements for Fizz on campus surfaced in Oct. 2023 when handouts with QR codes leading to the app’s store page were slipped under dorm doors and left around campus.
In the summer of 2021, two Stanford dropouts founded Fizz after the duo felt a lack of undergraduate community due to COVID restrictions. As of Feb. 2024, Fizz is prevalent on at least 80 college campuses nationwide.
An anonymous Eugene Lang student, hired by Fizz to promote the app within TNS, has mixed feelings about the platform and its community. They were hired by Fizz last fall but were frustrated when they had to pester their Fizz contacts for over a month to get paid.
The student posted an Instagram story for the app on Nov. 10, 2023, yet didn’t receive compensation until Dec. 13. “I just remember thinking the whole thing seemed kind of shady because it’s a startup with this big of a marketing budget, and then they’re really putting off payments…I was frustrated,” they said.
Signing up for the app requires students to use their school emails, so only people with New School emails can participate in the New School’s Fizz community. Fizz users can choose to remain anonymous or use an alias whenever posting. “Your personal information is never publicly visible to other users or moderators in the Fizz app,” states Fizz’s privacy policy.
Some users express their opinions about New School administrative struggles through comedy, with one user posting, “I’m financially at a stage where I understand why people do fraud” on March 31.
Other anonymous posts include “I need a cigarette after registration,” and “sex is good but have you tried some awkward UC eye contact?”
Some users adopt a less comedic tone, expressing issues with staff, socializing, and class disparity. A post captioned, “Does anybody else feel insanely poor among people at this school or is that just me” received 1,100 upvotes. “Anyone else having a hard time meeting new people these days” and “Fizz really more helpful than the staff here,” both posted on April 2, were featured in the Fizzin’ section of the app.
The Fizz community also adores University Center Cafeteria employee Jada Graham. A post reading, “Jada from the UC needs to replace Donna Shalala,” received 1,300 upvotes. “Shoutout to Queen Jada for being the only reason half of us are alive,” another user said. One user even named their profile “Jada Fan Account” and posted, “If you don’t got a reason to smile let it be Jada.”
Fizz functions similarly to Reddit; a post’s popularity is determined by its number of upvotes—dubbed “FizzUps.” Users with the most total FizzUps earn a spot on the Fizz leaderboard. Posts that receive many FizzUps within a short time frame are featured on the “Fizzin’” section of the app, the Fizz equivalent of the trending page on X.
Fizz recently released an update that included the introduction of the “marketplace” tab, where TNS students can sell anything from stools to headphones to clothes. One user posted a listing for “definitely not fentanyl,” though the listing was taken down.
The Lang student does, however, believe in the app’s potential, saying, “Last semester, I remember there was a lot of stuff about STDs and sexual health, which is something that people struggled to talk about openly. I feel like it was good for that… an anonymous posting forum for a school, if used properly, I think it could be beneficial.”