July 13, 2007

The Death of a Virtual Campus

By ANDREA L. FOSTER

Woodbury University has been obliterated. The real-world campus of 1,500 students still stands, in Burbank, Calif. But in the freewheeling virtual world Second Life, Woodbury has been deleted.

Linden Lab, the company that runs Second Life, simply blanked Woodbury out of existence sometime during the last week of June.

The company took the drastic step, officials said, after administrators for the university's area ignored warnings to stop avatars — digital