Students at Utah State University dislike its Campus Story on Snapchat

By Braden Clark

Students at Utah State University have grown impatient with the lack of content on their school’s Snapchat campus story. The campus story is designed to highlight some of the qualities of the university, but some students feel like it’s not highlighting the right parts.

“It’s really strange and I often feel embarrassed for my school, because of the things that are posted on it,” said Monica Farfan, a student at Utah State. “There are a lot of strange things people post that get put on it, and whenever I watch it I’m confused why those pictures were chosen.”

The lack of content was really what bothered the students of the university, because the story doesn’t highlight the best parts of their campus. Certain events like a domestic violence awareness philanthropy event, the Utah State Greek’s Order of Omega awards banquet, or Big Brothers, Big Sisters youth carnival were all left off the feed completely that the students felt deserved to be on it appose to students singing in their dorm rooms.

Along with those problems students feel like the story should be a positive thing that incoming students can see what students are actually doing on campus, and not a negative.
“Hey Snapchat please take our campus snap away. We obviously don’t deserve it,” said Nadir Tekarli, the newly elected Utah State University Student Association’s business senator, over Twitter.

Snapchat introduced the campus story to the students of Utah State four weeks ago, and every week students have been displeased with either the content on the stories or the lack of content.

“We have so many amazing things happen here at Utah State that other universities don’t have, and that’s what should be highlighted,” said Logan Shomo, an independent outdoor photographer and student at Utah State Univeristy.

Snapchat announced the campus story back in October, 2014, but originally started out on four college campuses. As the popularity grew it spread to many colleges across the nation, and eventually landed in Logan, Utah, in early March.

When the creators of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, announced the campus story option they also said Snapchat will regulate each of the stories and what would go on each of the schools’ feeds.

Amanda DeRito, Utah State University’s social media coordinator, said the university’s campus story is curated by Snapchat, and nobody at Utah State chooses what goes up on the live feed.

“We aren’t able to influence what is shared through live stories,” DeRito said. They choose what they see as worthy or reflective of our campus, and I’ve heard from a few students that they are discouraged by what isn’t chosen for inclusion.”

“I just don’t understand how someone over at Snapchat could make the case, ‘Yeah, that is what Utah State is about’ so that’s confusing to me,” said Ricky Benitez, a student at Utah State. “How could they possibly know what we are all about here if they don’t live here or are from here?”

The feed goes live every Wednesday, and students submit their photos to the Snapchat database throughout the remainder of the day. Nothing has been done to change the school’s feed, but students are waiting for an improvement in selection.

“I think it would be great if we saw a little more variety in the stories after every week, but right now I would like to see Snapchat highlight our great outdoors we have here in Logan,” Shomo said.