From up-to-the-minute Charger sports scores to what’s good for lunch at Saga., Hillsdale College students are turning more and more to Twitter for campus information.
The social media platform allows users to publish 140-character updates, called tweets. In the case of Hillsdale students, those tweets can mention event announcements, quotes from the Christian writer C.S. Lewis, or photos of recent study spots.
Anyone can read these tweets, from alumni in Delaware to political pundits or syndicated newspaper columnists. Professor of History Bradley Birzer, an avid social media user with more than 3,900 tweets, said the wide reach of Twitter enables a vast virtual community.
“Twitter allows us in our relative isolation here in southern Michigan to communicate with anyone in the world instantaneously,” Birzer said. “In that way, it has the astounding potential to bring a community of geographically separated folks together.”
Hillsdale staff and administration members have picked up the social media platform to tweet about the athletics department, scholarly articles published by professors, and even upcoming events at the Alan P. Kirby Center.
Joe Cella, a communications and marketing consultant for Hillsdale, said Twitter fits nicely under the college’s goal of advancing its message.
“It’s really niche-marketing in a way that can effectively spread the word to individuals and organizations that might not know about the college,” he said. “The more people learn about Hillsdale and what it does, the better.”
Students watching the social media platform said that the number of Hillsdale users jumped up significantly in the last 12 months.
Junior Katy Bachelder with 1,600 tweets to her online name, said that is partially because of how easy it is to get information through Twitter.
“It is hands down the fastest way to get information,” Bachelder said. “We knew that Osama bin Laden had been killed a full hour before it was announced.”
Bachelder said Twitter has affected the way people look for news.
“It’s made people less patient, more demanding,” she said. “I’m interested to see how it affects the English language eventually.”
Here are a few representative Twitter accounts to follow:
Athletics
Hillsdale College athletics (@HC_Chargers 3,287 tweets, 709 followers)
Sports Information Director Brad Monastiere said he sees Twitter as an opportunity to complement Hillsdale’s athletic website. He uses the social media platform to live-tweet games, and post updates on teams’ schedules and achievements. He said Twitter has been especially good for getting information out to people off campus who want to stay in touch with the school
“The demand is there,” he said. “Twitter is a very simple and easy way to satisfy that demand.”
Several of the individual teams have their own handles (like @HillsdaleTrack)
Students
C.J. Mifsud
(@CMifsud — 12,870 tweets, 261 followers) Sophomore C.J. Mifsud said he uses Twitter mostly to keep up with his friends.
“It’s a little more personal than Facebook,” he said.
His pet peeve?
“When people use Twitter as a replacement for texting.”
That said, “Hashtags are some of my favorite things, and I love following trending topics,” he said.
“Everyone should have a Twitter.”
Katy Bachelder (@katythenomad — 1,580 tweets, 240 followers) Junior Katy Bachelder tweets about everything from political trends to funny quotes from Hillsdale friends.
“It’s finding the funny in the ordinary,” she says.
Her biggest Twitter peeve? People who misuse hash tags.
“Hashtags should be either a category or a pithy summary of your tweet. They should be short!”
Sonny Gast (@SonnyGast — 2,492 tweets, 623 followers) Senior Sonny Gast said she initially got on Twitter in May 2010 to keep up with news, and Charger athletics.
“It has really become a medium to stay engaged with the world outside of Hillsdale and to keep up with campus activities and friends,” Gast said.
Gast said Twitter habits like bad grammar and poorly-spaced tweets dominating the Twitter feed can be irritating sometimes, but the thing that drives her most crazy?
“Links that don’t work!”
She said hashtags took a while to get used to too.
“At first I thought they were really redundant … but now I sadly find myself hashtagging things in normal conversation with other people,” she said, laughing. “Though I know quite a few students and even a few professionals that do the same thing.”
Professors
Brad Birzer (@bradleybirzer— 4,035 tweets, 443 followers) Professor of History Bradley Birzer said Twitter allows him to pursue four of his passions: learning about human rights abuses in America and abroad, keeping up with friends, everything Apple-related, and what’s new in the world of progressive rock.
He first started tweeting in 2010. He says it was part of an overarching conversion to social media.
“I was pretty skeptical at first,” he said.
Since then he has tweeted more than 1,536 times, and re-tweeted other people 1,539 times.
“I really appreciate the brevity of Twitter. There’s something very satisfying about expressing a serious or whimsical thought in 140 characters,” he said.
He said he uses Twitter predominantly to connect to people outside Hillsdale, following a slew of alumni, and the occasional celebrity or two.
“I’ve yet to see a tweet from Steve Martin that didn’t cause me to laugh out loud,” he said.
John J. Miller (@heymiller — 509 tweets, 676 followers)
Director of the Dow Journalism Program John Miller has the most Twitter followers of all Hillsdale faculty. He said he joined the social media site in 2009, for “self-promotion, of course.”
Miller tweets about articles and events, many of them from National Review on-line.
He claims GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney as a follower.
His favorite person to follow?
“Jonah Goldberg is the world’s best tweeter,” Miller said.
College-related
HC Kirby Center
(@kirbycenter — 1,323 tweets, 503 followers)
Stephen Ford ‘10, research manager for the Alan P. Kirby Center, said the Kirby Center handle has existed for several years.
“We reach out to citizens, students, policymakers, and our alumni,” Ford said. “The Kirby Center Twitter is functional but not flashy.”
The handle features updates about the center’s live events, and webcasts, as well as written work from Hillsdale faculty, and last but not least, quotes of famous figures and founders.
“ Our most popular tweet to date was, “’The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese,’ by G.K. Chesterton.”
Hillsdale
(@hillsdale — 957 tweets, 3,038 followers)
Started in 2009, the Hillsdale College handle is managed by several people, including Director of Marketing William Gray and Joe Cella, a Communications and Marketing consultant for the college.
In 2009, administrators realized the role Twitter could play in marketing the school, Cella said.
“They recognized the value of using the social media platform as a means to communicate to citizens of the principles upon which Hillsdale is founded,” Cella said.
Hillsdale’s Twitter feed is full of information about college events, articles and speeches by professors and friends of the school, and a plethora of references to the college’s Constitution course.
“We’re basically looking for individuals, institutions, and organizations, that would appreciate Hillsdale College,” Cella said.
The Twitter handle tends not to reply directly to Tweets.
“We haven’t gotten involved in a flame war,” Gray said, laughing.
