My university was relatively big, and rumors could still easily catch up to you because all it took was one person to find out. I knew a guy that got accused of date raping a girl and he got kicked out of pledging for his fraternity and he tried joining others but once one person figured out who he was he would get dropped. He had a lot of trouble even going to independent parties because there would always be someone that recognized him, and they would kick him out immediately.
If a university is more than 15,000+ undergraduates and more than a few thousand graduate students, I would not think rumors would be that big of a problem. However, if the threshold is one person out of 15,000 finding out, then I can see your point.
Google (and now ChatGPT) has made things more difficult for the accused. The guy who you knew probably got his name in some local media article and then anyone could find that article in the Google search results.
At my college, there was a mandatory session for all freshman to attend the weekend before classes started. It was about staying out of trouble. This was Fall 2001 and the university was already telling stories about how easy it was to get your name and photo out on the internet. As Fall 2001 semester was starting, Google had already established itself as a major force as a search engine. More and more people were getting high speed internet access at home. We were warned about not having our pictures taken doing questionable things. Cell phone penetration was lower my freshman year and phones didn't have cameras in them yet. However, small digital cameras were easy to carry around by that point and pictures could get uploaded to the internet within a few hours by then.
In my senior year (2004-2005), I remember that Facebook and MySpace were becoming a thing. YouTube also launched during that year. Those developments were changing the internet as compared to my freshman year. However, the internet of my freshman year was advanced enough.
In my 2001-2002 freshman year, the majority of us freshmen didn't have basic cell phones then. However, by the early part of junior year (2003-2004), I noticed that most of my class level had obtained their first cell phone. It did change the campus experience to be able to have access to a phone when out of the home. In my junior and senior years, mobile calling was the more exciting thing as compared to text messages. I also liked digital storage of phone numbers, which meant I didn't have to carry a pen and small notepad to off campus parties (or the bars when I turned 21) to collect women's phone numbers.
He still did manage to find girlfriends in college, so I will say that lol.
How did he get girlfriends? Campus clubs? Approaches after his classes? Random, on campus approaching? Swipe apps or social media DMs?
