Meet Ty Ger: Christine Hu ‘22

Since it was created in October, Tiger Confessions has made its way into the intricate fabric of day-to-day Princeton life, slipping into conversations, adding punchlines to jokes and serving as an emotional outlet when there is nowhere else to go. Considered therapeutic by some and toxic by others, the page has undoubtedly made Princeton’s campus feel smaller: students realize, with each light-hearted compliment or serious confession, that the joys and struggles they experience are never exclusively their own.Embodying this spirit is Ty Ger herself, whose comments offer candid solace to those seeking company, help, or something in between. Not many Princeton students can say they do the same on a daily basis, much less hold the weight of hundreds of confessions that are ultimately read by more than 4,000 people.It takes a lot to run Tiger Confessions. Just ask Christine Hu, the first-year student otherwise known as Ty Ger.

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Christine Hu is from Scarsdale, New York. Admitted to Princeton’s Class of 2021, she initially came to campus in the fall of 2017. Halfway through her first semester, however, she decided to take a leave of absence.

“I had a pretty hard time with mental health stuff, and I ended up leaving,” she said. Christine returned to campus the following fall. “Having some time to decompress a little bit and learning how to deal with disappointments, I think, was important to me during my time off.”When we met in the Rocky-Mathey dining hall after dinner hours, the room quiet save for the clinking of cereal bowls and the hum of working students, she was a wearing a maroon-colored, long-sleeved shirt, sleeves rolled up to her elbows. “New England Cross Country Championship 2013” was printed in white font across her torso. She used to be a competitive runner at Phillips Exeter Academy, the New Hampshire prep school where she studied prior to coming to Princeton.There was something about the way Christine carried herself—back straight, hands constantly moving to fix her impeccably tied bun—that suggested a strong sense of control and poise: had she not come to Princeton, she said she probably would have attended West Point,  the United States Military Academy. She decided on Princeton after receiving a scholarship through the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program, which, due to mental health concerns, she is no longer pursuing.“It was really hard for me to accept,” she started—then paused, before resuming again. “I felt like I lost a lot of opportunities and things that I was looking forward to.”She sometimes runs with the Princeton Running Club but has yet to return to a competitive level. “Sometimes I run for fun; other times I don’t run at all. And I guess that is still something that I struggle with a little bit. It makes me unhappy that I’m not as competitive as I used to be, but it definitely—it definitely doesn’t outweigh the positives I feel here.”There’s her daily Chinese class, where she learns the language of her parents—both immigrants from China—and which “feels like a family.” Then there’s Computer Science, the major she was “so sure” about when she first came to Princeton. Unexpectedly, but most rewardingly, there’s also Dostoevsky: “I took a class on Dostoevsky last fall, and that was mind-blowing,” she said. “Something about his novels I find very comforting.”She decided to write her Dean’s Date paper, entitled ‘A Serene Faith,’ on Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.“In that book, one of the brothers—his name is Ivan Karamazov—his faith in God is a little shaky, almost to the point that people call him an atheist,” she explained. Although she isn't religious, she saw in Ivan “a lot of traits" that reminded her of herself. "It’s kind of hard to say in words, but I think the novel does such a good job of arguing for faith above rationality, and I was personally convinced by that.”Thanks to the course, Christine—who once wholeheartedly committed herself to Computer Science—is now considering a major in Slavic Languages & Literatures.“I guess time helps change your priorities,” she said. She smiled while she talked, occasionally adjusting her rectangular, black-framed glasses or brushing her hair. “I’ve discovered new things I’m interested in now, and that has been really helpful.”

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A romantic might believe that it was faith in humanity that inspired the birth of Tiger Confessions. The reality, however, is a little more practical: “I personally am a fan of compliments and admirers pages,” Christine admitted. She hasn’t created a page before, but enjoyed using Exeter Compliments back in high school. “The past admirers pages were all inactive, so I thought I’d make my own.”

Tiger Confessions was thus born on a school night during the fall semester, unsurprisingly—by Princeton’s standards, that is—during a bout of procrastination.“Getting off the ground, I definitely had to friend a lot of people proactively,” said Christine. She started off by sending “mass friend requests” to Princeton students, hoping that at least one person would accept. Six months after the creation of the page, she receives up to five friend requests a day. “People actually want to be friends with Ty Ger now,” she said, amused.The anonymity, kept until now, was a deliberate gesture to not only make the page “seem more official,” but also to let her work on the page alone. Christine, who currently lives in a single, identifies as a private person.“A lot of people don’t know about the majority of things I do, and I kind of enjoy that,” she said. But when an anonymous poster submitted a confession in mid-March asking Ty Ger to come down from the so-called “pedestal” of her anonymity (“use your identity like the rest of us,” the poster wrote), Christine wanted people to know that she “wasn’t that serious about staying anonymous.”“I’d hope that not being anonymous anymore would make people not as harsh, or at least think a little bit before they post any messages or make confessions, just because—and this is something I’m trying to work on—I feel really bad when I know that someone is hurt, or if people feel like the page is contributing bad things to the campus,” she said.Despite the veil of anonymity, an average user of Tiger Confessions can tell that there is a human sitting, somewhere, behind a screen. “Please call me out when I slip up,” Ty Ger had responded to the anonymous poster. “And if you want to know who I am, just shoot me a DM and I’ll lyk.”Aside from a few close friends, strangers who met with Ty Ger and curious student journalists like myself, the only other person who knew Ty Ger’s real identity until now was her writing seminar professor, who, fittingly, taught a class named ‘Confessions.’“It was funny because people would talk about the page sometimes,” Christine said. One of the first assignments in the class had to do with campus confession pages; most students, unsurprisingly, chose to focus on Tiger Confessions. “It’s just interesting for me to realize that a lot of people on this campus are reading this page. It feels nice that I made something like that.”Christine admitted, however, that it isn’t always fun. Much of the responsibility for the controversies surrounding Tiger Confessions—which encompass stalking, censorship and uninformed advice to those in need of help—have landed, due to Christine’s use of personal discretion to select published posts, on her shoulders.“All the messages I get, I definitely take them very seriously,” she said. “I know intention doesn’t really affect whether something is good or bad, but I would never intentionally try and hurt people or make people feel unimportant. I try my best to do what I think will help the most people.”Current Wilson RCA Zartosht Ahlers ‘19 believes that, to some extent, the page has succeeded in doing so. Tiger Confessions has “created a really effective discourse for students to be able to share what they’re going through,” he said.“As an RCA, you already see the hidden underbelly of how campus feels; you feel the anxieties, worries and stresses of students on campus,” he added. Zartosht occasionally responds to confessions on the page, especially when they concern issues of self-harm or loneliness. Yet despite the fact that his job frequently exposes him to mental health issues, it is “still shocking” to see so many posts about students struggling.

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For the most part, however, the positive effects of Tiger Confessions have outweighed the difficulties Christine has experienced due to the page. Christine, who is very open about her own experiences with mental health in her responses to certain confessions, believes that creating the platform has made the student body much more relatable.“I wonder sometimes how much things would change if people actually interacted with each other a little more,” she said. She told me about getting lunch with someone who messaged Ty Ger after a close relative had passed away: they got lunch in Wucox, talked about their weeks and what was “causing them stress and giving them hope.” Although Christine hasn’t seem them again since, the gesture was important for her. “When I was here a year ago, sometimes I felt I was the only one struggling. And now I really know that’s not true.”The decision to reveal her identity wasn’t an easy one, but Christine believed it was time to do so. Though Ty Ger’s anonymity may have made her more approachable, a single person can only balance a burden that heavy for so long. Besides, by no longer using a pseudonym, Christine hoped that she’d be able to connect with even more people.“I’m always up for meeting new people,” she said. “In fact, I could use more friends. If people read the article”—referring to this one—"and want to talk at all about anything, I feel like that’s something I would enjoy.”What about Tiger Confessions?“My feelings about the page fluctuate a lot,” said Christine. “I honestly thought it would’ve died out a little bit by now, but people are still joining everyday.”And as long as the page stays active, Christine intends to stay on at the helm."Honestly, I feel pretty attached to Tiger Confessions, so either the page will die out naturally or I’ll just continue running it and see where it goes.”Update: This post was updated on April 16, 2019 to clarify Christine's relationship with religion.