The Hillsdale Alumnus manages social media for the New York Post. Sometimes he communicates with his roommate in sound effects. He’s been backstage with Lady Gaga and forgets to mention it. But’s that’s just Joel Pavelski ’11—Hillsdale’s “yes” man.
“My attitude is to say yes to everything,” Pavelski said. “I was not your typical Hillsdale kid: bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, a clean-scrubbed conservative, the Christian ‘good kid.’ Not to say that I’m not any of those things, but I was a member of a minority group that said yes to things other people didn’t.”
Before graduating from Hillsdale with a double major in English and theater, Pavelski certainly stood out on campus. He became known as the guy who never said ‘no,’ a bold approach that Pavelski attributes to growing up as a homeschooler in the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin.
“I felt like the default answer was always ‘no.’ We were denying ourselves because we needed to be good Midwesterners and eat our vegetables,” Pavelski said.
At Hillsdale, Pavelski felt free to make his own decisions. Life seemed to take on a new slant when he discovered his niche in the theatre department, where he often starred as the villain in plays, and as a reporter for The Collegian.
“Joel was very assertive, certainly not someone you forgot once you’ve met him,” said James Brandon, professor of theater at Hillsdale and Pavelski’s former faculty adviser. He’s the kid who came out in The Collegian. That was a big deal. That’s the kind of thing Joel does though,”
Fast forward a few years and Pavelski is still coloring his life with theater and news reporting, only now his office is a block from Times Square.
“One of the things I love about working at the New York Post is that we have our own thing going. It’s unique with a fun voice,” Pavelski said. “It has a character, jokes about itself, and chides celebrities who do stupid things. There’s definitely a space for that in the more national online audience.”
Pavelski manages the New York Post’s social media platforms, trains its journalists to promote their own stories, and constantly searches for ways to make its website easier for users to navigate.
“Journalism is changing,” he said. “The business model of the past is being cannibalized by the Internet. We want engagement—power readers and sharers of our content. Everyone’s trying to figure out how to connect with readers and inject their best content into people’s lives in a way that advertisers would pay to be a part of.”
When he’s not spearheading the effort to integrate social media and journalism, Pavelski said he still finds time to create havoc: attending theater performances, hanging out at Central Park, going to museums, thrift shopping in Brooklyn, and—of course—writing.
“I’ve been writing a book. It’s about my experiences growing up in a Christian home, coming out when I was 16, going to Hillsdale and being who I am, then going to New York.” Pavelski pauses to take a breath, as though he’s content with leaving it at that, but continues anyway, “I’ll be writing an emotionally heart-wrenching chapter, like when my brother died, and think I know the title. But there’s still no title.”
Pavelski hopes to publish his memoir sometime in the future, along with a children’s novel that he’s also working on for his little sister—a different side of the man who often played the villain on stage.
“Just meeting him, people wouldn’t understand how incredibly sweet Joel is,” said Kirsty Sadler, a 2011 Hillsdale alumna and theater major who now lives with Pavelski in New York. “For example, he’s really tall and when I need something on a high shelf, he will smile and come get it for me. Joel is the best roommate ever.”
The two roommates find plenty of ways to keep themselves entertained in the city. During a bar hopping outing last Halloween, Pavelski and Sadler created a game to amuse themselves: trolling strangers.
“I love your costume! Are you Honey Boo Boo?” Pavelski asks a random lady, trying to ignore Sadler’s grin.
“What! How can you not tell that I’m the Queen of Hearts?” frowns the drunken woman, completely appalled and totally unaware that she is the sorry victim of a silly joke.
The roommates laugh for a long time. In fact, Pavelski seems to spend a lot of his time laughing, even at himself.
“Joel was surely one of our ‘go to’ actors. He always got along with everybody down here really well,” says George Angell, professor of theater, “One of the last things he played was a role as Tim Ferdinand of Spain and he had a page boy cut wig that he had to wear. Joel became the butt of much teasing. He has a great sense of humor.”
His friends this fun-loving side of Pavelski’s personality last New Year’s Eve during an expedition to Times Square.
“We just wanted to see the ball drop! But we were too far away. My friend tried flirting with some of the cops standing at the barricades, even I did a little, but no such luck. We tried sneaking past them and got shouted back and nearly arrested,” Pavelski recalls with a smile.
Undeterred, the yes man came up with a new idea. He had a pass from the building security at his work to get into his office in case he needed to work that weekend. The only problem? The pass expired at noon on December 31.
Pavelski and friends tried to get though 43rd street with the pass, but the police ignored them. They tried asking at 44th street, but were not successful. Then, after being rejected at 45th street, the expedition seemed hopeless.
“At 46th, we walked up just as they were closing the street barricades behind a police horse. I shouted ‘Hold the gate!’ as we ran up, trying to act important. The police stopped us. I said, ‘I work right there, here’s my pass, we need to get by.” And he waved me on. Past the thousands of people lining the sidewalks, we walked down the empty barricaded streets right into the center of Times Square,” Pavelski grins.
Of course, until the music started, Pavelski and friends couldn’t have realized that they were standing five feet from where Lady Gaga would be performing that evening.
Pavelski plans to continue developing the New York Post’s social media platform and won’t be searching for a new job anytime soon. However, he also wouldn’t rule out the possibility of moving on to a new opportunity sometime in the future.
“Joel’s going places,” Sadler said. “He is a guy who always says ‘yes’ to something new. Wherever life takes him, he’ll be up for it.”
