Stuywatch.com, the Web site created last month as a forum for discontent Stuyvesant students, is losing momentum quickly.

The founders of the site, two Stuyvesant students assuming the pseudonyms Hiro and Chase, started stuywatch as a means of uniting the student body against perceived injustice by the administration. However, the Web site has also created its share of disunity.

Infighting among its members and disruptive and incendiary posts on the forums caused the founders to shut down the site for one week, from Wednesday, October 3 to Wednesday, October 10.

“In part, the media contributed to the shutdown,” Hiro said.

A front-page September 26 article in The New York Sun, “Rebellion, of Sorts, Stirring at Stuyvesant High,” described stuywatch as “a grassroots student movement dedicated to opposing security measures taken since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.”

According to Hiro, the article “contributed negative attention, in that more idiots came on to” stuywatch.com. Frustrated by the disruptive posts some users were posting on stuywatch’s forums, Hiro and Chase promised “a reinvigorated forum and agenda” upon its return.

The site’s relaunch was accompanied with a new editorial policy of banning users and deleting vandalism. Since relaunching, the site has experienced a decrease in activity.

Calling stuywatch “the official unofficial guide to student rights and news at Stuy High,” Hiro and Chase initially took a number of steps to promote their cause. In their Kids First initiative, they urged members to put up posters around Stuyvesant that advertised their cause. The posters included the words “Kids First” as a nod to former Stuyvesant Principal Jinx Perullo, who wore a pin adorned with those words for several days during her tenure.

“I believe in the motto of ‘Kids First,’” freshman Sam Furnival said. “It unites individual students into a whole student body […] I hope stuywatch can bring back the rights students lost and maybe bring about new ones.”

The posters also caused a spike in stuywatch’s membership. For some students, however, the posters had the opposite effect of that intended.

“I’ve seen a lot of posters around, but they didn’t convince me to join,” freshman Andrew Chen said. “They were pretty bad advertisements.”

Hiro and Chase also began a collection fund to raise money for buttons that would bear the words “Kids First.” Their goal was to raise 200 dollars to pay for 1,000 buttons. They raised only two dollars.

Junior J.J. Russo said he hasn’t joined stuywatch because the site has not made substantial progress. “It’s a good idea but unless they actually do something, it’s just talking,” he said. “All I see stuywatch as is another way to talk about things we’ve already been talking about.”

Some of stuywatch’s troubles have come from watchstuy.com. This site, created by senior Shane Sheehy, opposes the views of Hiro and Chase and promotes security, order and justice at Stuyvesant instead.

“The things that [Hiro and Chase] cite as student rights simply do not exist,” Sheehy said. “If you don’t fulfill your side of the responsibility, you don’t deserve the privilege in the first place.”

Members of watchstuy also put up posters in the hopes of countering the ideas of stuywatch.

“Watchstuy started as satirical and funny,” Hiro said. “[But] it’s a joke that’s been taken too far.”

Heng Li Ren, whom Sheehy appointed Minister of Information on watchstuy, said the site is not a satire. “The number one thing that you have to understand is that watchstuy is not a joke,” he said. “A lot of stuff we say is only for fun rhetoric, but we’re really serious about the content of what we say.”

Stuywatch boasts 849 accounts as of Tuesday, October 16, although some of those accounts are duplicates.

Some faculty members, including technology teacher Richard Rosen, computer science teacher Peter Brooks and Computer Science Coordinator Mike Zamansky (‘84), have registered on the site.

“I like to keep an eye on whatever […] Stuy Web presences are out there because it helps keep tabs on the pulse of the student population,” Zamansky said. “If the students can get a united constructive voice, they can make a difference. […] It’s got to be a large concerted effort. It’s got to be a carefully considered effort, so it’s done in the right way.”

Brooks registered on stuywatch after reading the Sun article. “It seemed like a small group of students were reasonably vehement, but not much else,” he said. “Unless you find a way to move [stuywatch] to the front of people’s minds, I don’t see it being any more successful than a bunch of students’ blogs.”

“The biggest problem is organizing the students,” Zamansky said. “And I don’t know if that can happen.”

According to Chase, stuywatch was meant to be something that students could be a part of and support, but those efforts did not produced their desired result.

“It became another organization that didn’t do anything,” Chase said. “It’s an example of how impossible it is to unite anybody.”