April 20, 2024, will mark the three-year anniversary of one of Hillsdale College’s most successful meme accounts.  @hillsdank_college boasts 1,404 followers on Instagram, second only in followers to @barstooldale. For years, students have wondered who’s the mind — or minds — behind the posts that make them laugh so much. Now we know.

Seniors Chris Dick, Caleb Fournet, and Truman Kjos have sat down  to discuss their page’s success and legacy.

How did this start?

Kjos: Caleb, for weeks, was like, “Hey, guys, we need to make a meme account. This would be so much fun.” 

Fournet: Yea. Chris and I were roommates in Whitley. And one night I was said,  “Chris we have to do this. Let’s do it now.” And so, we called Truman because he’s good at making memes and we want him on the team. At a certain point, especially in 2021, every single meme account had a Whitley affiliation. 

Throughout everything, all three years, what’s the purpose of the page been? To make people laugh? To make campus critiques?

Fournet: What’s really interesting about running a meme account at Hillsdale is that people at Hillsdale have like a high tolerance for humor but also get pissed off really easily. There’s certain areas where you can poke too much fun, like at fraternities and sororities, because you have groups like Panhel that won’t allow it to happen. So, you have to deal with balancing the line there, even though Greek life is a huge target for humor. Same thing with the dorms. Their RAs might get upset. We think the point of Hillsdank — as opposed to maybe some of the other accounts you see — is that we poke fun more at like, “Oh, I was in Lane today and this thing happened,” or like a weird study habit, or the challenge of writing an essay or a particular professor, as opposed to making fun of something crazy happened at a party on Manning Street. The account stays a little less controversial that way.

Dick: We want to play on Hillsdale tropes — things that are evergreen. Like our most recent meme, Dr. Arnn walking out to the Lil Yachty thing. People like that — not because you have to have been on campus at that point, but it’s just funny.

Do you ever take things down?

Fournet: We’ve occasionally posted stories that have upset people. And that’s typically because it’s Rush season. We’ll post something like “Rush Kappa,” and then a bunch of people from Panhel will respond and say, “Can you please take this down?” We don’t really know the rules for Panhel, so if that’s really upsetting people, we take it down. 

Dick: We’ve tried to make a purposeful effort to cultivate good relationships with groups  like Mossey Library and SAB. I feel like we’re the one account that has a good relationship with SAB.

Fournet: We decided to make this artificial love for Jack Cote.

Dick: It’s not artificial for me. I love Jack Cote. 

Caleb: We like to compliment their social media stuff all the time. SAB is probably another big group that’s easy to make fun of because campus is always complaining about their events. And we try to do a good job because there are a lot of people that put a lot of effort into SAB and people enjoy their events.

Other than your own, who’s your favorite campus meme page right now?

Dick: I’ll laugh at @fundie_gyatt.

Fournet: I really like @ithinkyoushoulddale because I really like “I Think You Should Leave.”

Kjos: Yea, me too. I’ll go with @ithinkyoushoulddale.

Is the page dying with you guys?

Kjos: Yea, we think so.

Fournet: I mean, people can try to convince us to give it to them, but we have no current plans to recruit someone.