It\u2019s time for another webmaster email story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had an email sent in from someone complaining about the poor behavior of our students and how they threatened a conservative figure that came onto campus. And how they would no longer recommend students go to our institution because of that. They included a youtube video link and I reluctantly clicked it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Within about 4 seconds, I realized two problems.\u00a0 \u00a0 One, it was from over 5 years ago.\u00a0 And two, it was from a different<\/em> Ohio university.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then I realized the real problem. The focus of the video was Kaitlin Bennett – infamous for open-carrying an AR-10 on Kent State\u2019s campus the day after her graduation and gaining the name Gun Girl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She\u2019s a darling of conservatives and has made a social media career out of having terrible ideas, getting in people\u2019s faces about them, and then pouting because people are mean to her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The video did have students being aggressive towards her and her team and throwing things at her car when they ran her off campus. Not appropriate behavior – but not unsurprising either. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m certain her Oscar is in the mail for her feigned surprise and disbelief at the response to her rhetoric. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I approached this email as a problem to be solved. \u00a0 I did a reluctant search on “her name + Akron” and found two videos of her on our campus.\u00a0 One was an interview done by a communications student for Z-TV and the other was from her youtube channel about how she \u201cchanged people’s minds\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n A-hem.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n So, I worked on an email to express my concern about the student behavior and also politely point out that it was from several years ago and from a different institution. I planned on sharing the other video links back and suggesting that they visit our campus and see how open this is to everyone – no matter their viewpoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then I stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And deleted everything I had written.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because it doesn\u2019t matter. Their email wasn\u2019t the start of a conversation – it was the end of it. It doesn\u2019t matter if they got the facts wrong – there was no defense for my alma mater. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Just like the Gun Girl, they wanted<\/em> to be mad about something.\u00a0 They wanted to be outraged<\/em> at an invented injustice.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, there\u2019s no response that would make this better. No carefully written email would shine any light there. No rebuttal would win the argument. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I didn\u2019t delete the email, but I unflagged it and moved on.\u00a0\u00a0I can’t imagine being a social media specialist that has to deal with crap like this every day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There are other emails that need my attention and other problems that can – and want to be – solved. So, I\u2019ll focus on those and do my best where help is needed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And shine a little light on the places that are tired of darkness, perhaps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s time for another webmaster email story. I had an email sent in from someone complaining about the poor behavior of our students and how they threatened a conservative figure that came onto campus. And how they would no longer recommend students go to our institution because of that. They included a youtube video […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3218,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3217\/revisions\/3218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}