In the stressful final days of a long and trying semester, Colgate University professors wanted to spread some love. To get the message across, they turned to a social media scene frequented by students but foreign to many professors.They set out to take back Yik Yak by flooding the anonymous social media app with happy thoughts.
Yik Yak -- like the many “confessions websites” before it -- is associated with campus-specific hateful comments and cyber bullying.
“It started there, and we wanted to end it there,” said Eddie Watkins, an associate professor of biology at Colgate.
Racist comments on Yik Yak were responsible in part for tensions at Colgate in September that led a group of students to stage a multi-day sit-in to protest the university’s lack of diversity. Insulting -- and at times threatening -- comments reappeared on the app's Colgate page (and elsewhere) in recent weeks as people across the country have organized to protest grand jury decisions in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of police.
During the September sit-in, associate biology professor Geoff Holm knew faculty members who posted tried to spread some Colgate campus love on Yik Yak. But individually, their comments weren’t very influential.
He thought a unified effort to spread positive thoughts would be more effective, and he suggested the idea last week to a few friends who are faculty members.
The Rest.
I can't get past the sheep.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. If Cal's off on a golf course somewhere, who created the wonderful (if perhaps insufficiently blurry -- but who needs blurry when you've got a sheep with dreadlocks?) graphic?
DeleteOr is it a yak? A yak in sheep's clothing? A sheep in yak's clothing? Plus mortarboard, of course.
Given the title "Yik Yak Take Back", I assume it is a yak. But great graphic, regardless.
ReplyDeleteIt's an oft-used grad cap that Hiram stuck on a photoshopped yak.
ReplyDeleteCould have used a Tic-Tac container with "Y's" `shopped over the "T's".
DeleteFucking Hiram.
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